


Little Arts of Vice

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Betrayal, Bets, Debauchery, F/F, First Time, Fluff, Friendship, Groping, Intimacy, Intrigue, M/M, Multi, Rutting, Scheming, Sibling Rivalry, Slow Burn, sex does happen eventually we promise, trickery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 03:52:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3595293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Tedium draws me to observation,” he murmurs. “Contemplation.”</i>
</p><p>  <i>“Manipulation,” Mischa adds calmly, tilts her head when Hannibal narrows his eyes at her. “You wouldn’t deny it, Hannibal, you’re proud of that one. And in truth you do it well.”</i></p><p>  <i>“There is little to manipulate when watching a dog chase a bird.”</i></p><p>It starts with a bet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WarpedChyld](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarpedChyld/gifts).



> A delightful mixture of "Liaisons Dangereuses" ("Cruel Intentions"), "Twelfth Night", "Much Ado About Nothing", a hint of "Dorian Gray", "The Importance of Being Earnest", and a side of "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead".
> 
> For the GORGEOUS [warpedchyld](http://warpedchyld.tumblr.com/), who requested a fic set in the Regency time period, an inexperienced Will, devious Lecter siblings, and some Kabloom on the side. So we present this: a bet for affection, mistaken (or misplaced, perhaps) attentions, childhood memories, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern in their female incarnations, several dogs, and a dramatically reached happy ever after.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I am painted a swan and find my own life exciting only through another’s eyes. The fashionable novels draw us in such splendor, in such glorious debauchery, I almost envy us.”_
> 
> _“Quite the dilemma."_
> 
> _“I have become the dog,” he laments, and Mischa’s smile pulls forth one from him as well._

“Which do you think will win?”

One page whispers against the other, turned with slender fingers. “Hmm?”

The eldest Lecter turns to his sister, spilled across the mossy velvet of the Grecian couch, one foot drifting to and fro across the floor. Her gown, diaphanous layers of gauzy white, shifts in countertime around her ankle, her feet bare, and golden curls topple loose over her pale shoulders from where they’re pinned in an intentionally haphazard knot.

She turns another page, and with a twitch of annoyance at being watched, raises her eyes to meet her brother’s impassive gaze.

“Well?”

“Well,” he agrees.

“I wasn’t listening.”

“I’m aware.” He shifts a shoulder, and turns back towards the window. “I asked who you believe will win.”

“Win what, Hannibal?”

Chin raising, hands folded behind his back, he rises forward a little onto his toes, as though it may provide him a better look over the expansive gardens. “There has been, for the better part of an hour, a war waged within our garden.”

“A war?”

“Yes,” he murmurs, the arch of a brow lifting the tone of his voice just as curiously. “Between the dog, and the swans.”

“Let’s return to your claim that you’ve been standing there for an hour.”

“The better part of one.”

“Hannibal.”

“Tedium draws me to observation,” he murmurs. “Contemplation.”

“Manipulation,” Mischa adds calmly, tilts her head when Hannibal narrows his eyes at her. “You wouldn’t deny it, Hannibal, you’re proud of that one. And in truth you do it well.”

“There is little to manipulate when watching a dog chase a bird.”

“You underestimate swans,” Mischa points out, another page turned without a word read. She tilts her head back with a sigh and a long arch of her neck, pale and pretty, before a hand comes up against it and fingers press to her pulse, head turned to rest her chin against her wrist. “They are as strong as they are graceful. The hound will chase and bray but it will hardly come out the victor.”

“Come and look.”

Mischa rolls her dark eyes to the ceiling and moves only when her brother’s gaze draws her to stand. She sets the book away, uncaring that the pages flex and fold where it falls from the plush pillow to the seat, and coils a hand in her hair as she moves closer, stands shoulder to shoulder with Hannibal to look out over the garden.

Beneath them, the distant dark shape of a long-furred dog vanishes into the fishpond, the enormous round centerpiece to the long walkways alongside which countless flowers stand as if at attention. Mischa hums as the dog emerges again, paws kicking in a wild paddle after the swans that calmly glide away.

“If the swans fly away, is it a loss for them, or the hound?”

“Why should they fly?”

“Would you not, pursued by a creature such as that?”

“No,” she muses, smile widening. “And certainly not from my own home.”

“The hound would argue that it’s equally his home,” Hannibal suggests, observing as it continues in gleeful circles as the swans keep their steady distance. “It does live here, after all.”

“Not properly.”

“Properly?”

“No,” Mischa snorts, one arm folded across the empire waistline of her dress, highly seamed beneath her breasts. Her other hand twines through a long curl. “A garden is no place for hounds to live, and entirely the _correct_ place for swans. He has no grounds on which to pursue them.”

Hannibal tilts his head aside, and leans a little lower towards his sister, voice falling to a rumbling murmur. “But you see there, as they circle, does it not appear as though the swans are, in fact, chasing the dog?”

“And the dog too foolhardy to notice,” Mischa smiles.

“Enamored with the chase.” Hannibal sighs, and his posture sags, for just a moment, before it returns, a practiced straightening of his shoulders, a deliberate arch of his neck as he lifts his chin. Poised and powerful and the perfect facsimile of a proper upper-class gentleman.

“You’re maudlin today.”

“I’m bored,” Hannibal answers, and releases the breath in a long, deep wave that almost moves him to step forward to keep balance. “I am bored, Mischa, with the balls, with the pretty dresses and pretty eyes and pretty hands and pretty words.”

A smirk, deliberately and masterfully masked by a bare lifting of her eyebrows, and his sister turns to him.

“My brother, a swan in a too-small lake?”

“I am painted a swan and find my own life exciting only through another’s eyes. The fashionable novels draw us in such splendor, in such glorious debauchery, I almost envy us.”

“Quite the dilemma."

“I have become the dog,” he laments, and Mischa’s smile pulls forth one from him as well, though he doesn’t turn to see it. Long enough siblings, now, to know each other well. Close enough as siblings, now, as they had not been in youth, to speak no words to be understood.

“Then grow enamored of a chase again.”

Hannibal hums, jaw brushing against the high collar that presses beneath it, and lifts a hand to smooth out his cravat, spanning it down the length of his soft velveteen riding coat, shining crimson. He had not bothered to change after his morning ride, as much to force his sister’s nose to wrinkle at the scent of horses as out of world-weary despair.

“Therein lies the true problem at hand,” Hannibal responds. “What am I to chase? Anything that might remotely compel me to the coursing flings itself into my jaws without so much as a bay or bark."

“Brother,” Mischa exclaims mildly, with a lilting laugh that follows and a hand against his arm. “Are you so certain you might have all within your jaws that is available to you?”

“The women of court, the women who do court, the men who keep them and on their own court in kind,” Hannibal rattles off with a flicker of displeasure between his brows. “If there’s no interest in the hunt, no challenge to it, then what is a hound - or a swan - to do?”

A pause between them, as the dog emerges from the pond and shakes itself vigorously.

Hannibal’s smile widens as his eyes narrow.

“What do you do, sweet Mischa, when you’ve no choice but to proceed as chosen for you by another’s desires?”

Her eyes narrow, as haughty in her carriage as Hannibal is in his, yet entirely her own whirlwind. She will not be a pretty wife for a pretty man. She will not be a trophy. He, instead, will be hers.

“I remind that as dogs bite, so do swans,” she replies, smoothing her hands down her dress and pushing up on her toes to stretch the muscles in her legs, long and beautiful and hidden. As her mind, from all but her family and Alana. Like her heart, Hannibal thinks, from all entirely.

In the garden, the dog gives chase again, a new target found and new joy within that. Yet it barely makes several yards before it stops, at attention as on a hunt, and turns, tail flying, to bound back towards another thing entirely.

“Purposeless,” Hannibal notes, finds his sister shaking her head, stepping just close enough to the window to feel the cool air beyond it against her skin. The dog comes to a stop before a man who bends to greet it, hands up in the wet fur with no fear of the mess and smell. He gestures to the lake and back, and though he crouches with his back towards the window, the smile is obvious in the way it unfurls his muscles, relaxes them in his own joy.

“Purposeful, and obedient,” Mischa points out, turning her head to glance at her brother, coy, proud. “A target to chase inevitably, and always return to. Never stale with riches and unripe with presumption.”

“And does not belong in the garden, yet resides there despite,” Hannibal finishes, tone and chin lifting in sudden curiosity. “They should not mix.”

“Man and dog?”

“Dog and swan.”

Hannibal watches as the hound splays its paws against the sun-warmed bricks, frozen for an instant before hurtling its body backwards, away from the man who stands and despite the dirtiness that Hannibal knows, with a wrinkle of his nose, must cling to him, he dusts his hands against his trousers. Dark curls, unkempt from work, shine like rosewood in the sun, his skin like ivory even though his hands have known work. Both brother and sister draw a breath as he turns, hands on his hips, to survey the garden.

“What a strange place the garden would become, were they to find kinship together.”

“It could not be so,” Hannibal answers softly. “One will always pursue the other, as invariably, our own futures push us forward to seek new prospects.” He glances to his sister, and just as soon turns back to watch the young man in the garden who stoops to remove a weed. “Are you looking at a new life, then, far below, lying with dogs?”

“You think so little of me, brother,” she sighs, tilts her head to regard their gardener with narrowed eyes of new appreciation. “You think I would sink, and not that he would rise. Swans will always have their wings. And dogs can be carried in flight, if for a brief moment.”

A tug pulls at Hannibal then, turning to watch as the man runs a hand through his hair, pushing it from his eyes. He finds them, there, in the window, and with a crooked smile raises a hand to wave. Mischa waves back, delicate fingers curling into her palm one after the other, suddenly coy, suddenly small, lip between her teeth and eyes narrowed until the young man looks away, ducks his head, and raises his eyes, next, to Hannibal, who does not wave.

But on him his eyes linger longer.

“Do not, Mischa.”

“Why?” She asks, amusement curling her lips as she watches Hannibal, sees the way his eyes stay on the young man who makes his way further across the garden, checking beneath his feet and around where he can see, keeping their grounds immaculate, alone, as his father had done for their family for many years before retirement. “He is a stable man, reliable, trustworthy and hardy.”

“And poor.”

“And you care as little for propriety as our parents care much for it,” she rebutts. “Do you think he will not have me?”

“Of course he would,” answers Hannibal, his tone overflowing graciousness, syrupy and cloying. “What man would not consider himself blessed by the stars themselves to share his company with Mischa Lecter -”

“Enough.” Her voice is curt, but she fights down a smile despite it. Hannibal considers the man, who again looks toward them in the window, less in greeting now than in self-awareness, pinking his cheeks dark enough that it can be seen from their sitting room.

“You’re making him uncomfortable.”

“I am not,” Mischa huffs, catching a fingertip between her teeth, arms folded, before she reluctantly turns away. “You think he’d say no.”

“I think he would be overwhelmed by the suggestion, and find reasons to let that sway him into chasing other birds.”

“Other birds?”

“Older birds,” Hannibal murmurs, eyes narrowing in pleasure as he follows his sister away from the window. “Were I a wagering man -”

“Aren’t you?”

“Were I now,” Hannibal amends, “I would put fair money on this particular hound preferring a very particular swan.”

“You assign such proclivities to such innocence, Hannibal,” she sighs, but her smile is wider, eyes just the same, awake from her own tedium and stupor their life brings, with the hint of a challenge and bet between them. “And you would put fair money on this?”

“Fair money on an unfair game, Mischa. One cannot assign proclivities to a person, they can merely read them.” Hannibal turns his eyes up as he ducks his chin, smug, clever, a match for Mischa as she is for him, and they have so missed sparring. “He is particular.”

“Are you preparing to chase, brother, or to be chased?”

“I did not name his particularity.”

“You did not have to.”

Hannibal’s smile is warm, smooth like butter in the sun, and he takes a seat where Mischa had reclined before, careful to take up her book and flatten the pages before setting it aside. He drapes one arm over the back of the couch, fingers toying with the design embroidered there.

“My mind against your wiles, sister, it is a chase I almost fear to start.”

“Do you fear for the money?”

“I fear for the hound.”

“Do not,” she insists, biting her bottom lip into a shade of rosy pink as she drapes herself between her brother’s legs. She stretches, curls spilling gold like sunlit water over her shoulders, and folds her hands on Hannibal’s chest, chin resting against them. “Though they are hardly as elegant as the swans - lacking the animal means to carry themselves with such refinement - hounds are sturdy things on their own. You think he will falter in a chase? I think not.”

Hannibal watches as Mischa toys with a button on his waistcoat, before he turns his attention towards the window again. Beyond the drapery there is only sky, deep boundless blue.

What else is there to do, really? In all likelihood, Hannibal imagines, their new gardener will be pleased to entertain the attentions of them both. Although, Hannibal considers, his is the harder hunt, should he have misjudged the lasting look that lingered on him from the garden beneath.

“Let us suppose that you, sweet sister, are victorious,” Hannibal considers, brow raising. “Will you marry him?”

She laughs, a snorting and inelegant sound, entirely genuine. “Of course not.”

“Then by what measure do we judge your success?”

“If he agrees to it,” she grins, teeth white against her lower lip again. “And you?”

“If he agrees to my bed.” Hannibal can’t resist a purr in his voice, nor the stretch that pulls feline through his spine, pleased even at the thought of it - not only for the victory, but for the challenge.

Mischa leans a little closer, pushing up with her toes against the floor, and settles again. “Will you bed him, if he does?”

Hannibal’s lips part, briefly, and close again, and there is answer enough in his eyes for her to grin, shake her head as though displeasure takes her, as though disappointment does.

“And the money?”

“Our usual wager,” Hannibal tells her, “unless you had your eye on a cravat you sought to claim as your own?”

“Or you a dress.” Mischa’s brow rises and she sighs, resting more of her weight against him. “The usual, then. A gentleman’s agreement.” She holds her hand out to him, delicate, and Hannibal takes it, to press a kiss against her knuckles.

“To your happy marriage,” he says, eyes narrowed and bright. Mischa curls her fingers with him just briefly and pulls her hand free.

“And to your delightful debauchery.”

A brief kiss, then, to his cheek and Mischa unfurls herself to stand, reaching for her book. She holds it to her chest as she walks silent over the plush carpet to the door, knowing Hannibal watches her in his periphery before tilting his head back over the back of the couch.

“Where are you going?” He asks.

“I find myself in need or the sun against my skin and grass soft against my feet,” Mischa replies, leaning in the doorway before pushing herself to straighten and, with a smile, takes her leave.

He listens, as her bare feet tap a fading rhythm against the tile floors, to the stairs and down them at a skip. It has been too long since either of them have felt the inspiration to do more than dally - Mischa in her lessons of music and needlework, Hannibal at his drawing desk or haunting the library in search of something he hasn’t yet read three times over. The Lecters in their finery, their visitors who come for tea and leave again - the servants and the caretakers, passing through like ghosts about their business for whom no one has any mind or particular interest. The house runs as a well-oiled machine, carrying on ceaselessly from day to day, and every bit as tedious.

Hannibal stretches with a hum, arms draping above his head and long legs pointing down to his toes, still in the jockey boots from his morning ride. He considers watching his sister ply herself in the garden, but decides instead that he will ready himself for when she’s finished, and heaves himself from the couch to return to his bedroom and a fresh change of clothes.

In the garden, the sun is glinting bright off every shimmering undulation of water in the pond and every flower that spreads itself wide to greet the day. It’s nearly too bright to read, but Mischa has no intention to do more than prop her book open and pretend it’s of more interest than it really is. The clamoring bark of a dog tugs at her attention and she smiles, bright as the blooms around her, to make her way towards it.

In a wide swath of grass, trimmed to uniformity to allow no disturbances of picnic blankets that could be spread across it, she sees the mottled animal, fur now dry and soft, racing fast enough that his body nearly outspeeds his paws. It grabs up a stick, tossing its head, and bounds back towards the young man who, laughing, crouches to tug it free from the dog’s happy jaws.

He is, in truth, not at all an ugly man, or even plain. Wild curls and a wide smile, eyes that narrow with it and pull dimples to his cheeks. There is a whisper of stubble across his jaw and top lip and it suits him, does not make him look unkempt or scruffy. He has been here, Mischa knows, most of his life, if not all of it. His father had worked the grounds, kept the hounds, for as long as Mischa has been alive, and longer still before, as Hannibal remembers him, as a child. His mother had left, or died - gone, is all Mischa knows, from kitchen gossip and overhearing quiet talks of her own parents - and so the old gardener had taken his son with him to teach him and mind him both.

Will had started working when his father took ill, and when his back no longer allowed him to move as he once had. The Lecters had been all too happy to keep on another Graham, and while Will now worked and his father did not, neither wanted for anything beyond their class.

Will is at an age directly between Mischa’s seventeen and Hannibal’s twenty-three, tall and strong, and contented to work long hours, never once complaining. In a husband, Mischa supposes no girl could want more, or should. A handsome and hardworking man that any girl would fancy. Surely he knows that, at least, and her own courtship of his affections will not be a long one.

A mere yes, and she can watch her brother brood himself into silence for several weeks, moping and prideful despite the hurt against it. It would amuse her greatly to see it, too long since Hannibal had been shown he is a man like any other, despite assurances from partners both male and female that he is more akin to an entity.

Mischa settles, a strategic bend to her back and tilt to her chin, showing her neck, the way her dress curves over her breasts and down against her legs, toes just peeking out from beneath it. She sits and she watches, as the dog races away again, tongue lolling and mouth open in a grin, happy enough, it seems, to do little more than chase and return.

The stick is tossed and brought back several more times, the young man finally breaking into a sputter of laughter, exhausted, on the last throw, and catching the dog against his chest when it lopes back to him.

“Enough,” Will laughs. “You win.”

“What is its name?”

Mischa’s voice rings out light and airy, unafraid to be the first to speak between them. Will blinks towards her, and straightens from where he had crouched in the grass, quick fingers moving to try and tidy himself at least a little.

“Miss Lecter.”

“That’s its name?”

Will grins, broad-toothed and bright, and ducks his head to watch the dog circle around his legs and finally drop to lie in the cool grass at his feet. “No,” he answers back. “His name is Winston.”

“That’s a funny name for a dog.” Fingers spreading through the grass, Mischa reclines onto a hand, book open against the soft swell of her stomach.

“Is it?” Will asks, stepping closer, a stride, two, if only so they needn’t raise their voice so much.

“It’s a better name for a person than a dog,” she teases, her smile only appearing in the rise of her lower eyelids, the warmth of her cheeks.

“Perhaps,” he agrees. “What would you call him, instead?”

Mischa’s lips part and she finds herself laughing, captivated by the blue eyes and wide smile and the ease with which he carries himself. She can see how he closes his body off, how he stoops his shoulders enough to defer to her as the daughter of the master of the house, but it hardly comes off tacky or rude.

“Miss Lecter seems fitting,” she finally says, watches the way Will’s eyes widen, terrified he had offended, the way his cheeks darken and skin warms over the bridge of his nose.

“I’m -”

“It’s so formal,” she laughs, fingers carressing the spine of her book as she speaks, an indirect directing, of sorts, for eyes to follow, and Will’s do before he schools his expression and lifts his eyes to hers.

“Formal?”

“Miss Lecter,” she repeats, smile wide, but brows almost drawn, innocent, little, though she is truly anything but in mind. “Can I call you Will?”

“Of course.”

“Then you can call me Mischa.”

Will looks away, towards the house that stands imposing over the grounds he keeps, embarrassed by the informality of it, but nothing if not acquiescing. “Miss Mischa,” he offers, eyes darting to hers just in time to see her arch a brow. “Mischa.”

She sits forward, tucking her feet beside herself and smoothing her skirt, entirely pleased by his yielding to her. He is an agreeable sort, not only in countenance but equally in seeking her favor, even if it is only in negotiating a name.

For now.

Leaning on a delicate hand that curls into the grass, she tilts herself toward him just a little, just enough that the swell of breasts shines like ivory in the sun, as white as the dress that drapes loose along her graceful frame. But no sooner has she arched herself into what she’s certain is precisely the right angle, head tilted so that a loose curl falls across her collarbone, than she feels an imposition in the air, as if a storm approached to mask the sun that illuminates her.

She does not need to look to know it’s him.

“Hello, Hannibal,” she chimes, and Will attempts to step away, back to his work, before the eldest Lecter’s voice stops him.

“Your music teacher would be most displeased to know you’re out here reading torrid novels, rather than at the harpsichord.”

Mischa blinks, eyes wide, innocent, and seems to almost shrink into herself for a moment, voice little when she asks, “Moi?”

Hannibal shakes his head, eyes narrowed in pleasure at her little games before replying in kind, French quick on his tongue as he repeats the veiled instruction to go inside, adds that their mother seeks her - entirely untrue, though hard to argue - and waits. Mischa watches him a moment more before turning her head towards Will again and smiling bright, pushing herself to stand and stretching on her toes as she does.

“I’m sorry my lessons call me away. Perhaps tomorrow we will have more time, Will.”

The young man’s brows rise, before he nods, a quick thing, summons a smile and allows his eyes to follow Mischa as she walks past him, meeting Hannibal’s as he does and he quickly turns his head aside, down, submissive and quiet, apologetic.

Winston meanders back to Will again, up to Hannibal to sniff against him and Will draws his lips back in a hiss as he stands to set his feet against Hannibal’s knee, but the older Lecter doesn’t seem to mind, dropping a hand for the dog to sniff.

“A clever boy,” Hannibal says, cupping the dog’s muzzle in his palm. “Did you train him yourself?”

Will seems to pull himself up taller than he did before, no longer the slight bowing of shoulders as he did to acquiesce to Mischa’s demure size, but attentive, now, to the Lecter heir. His throat jerks in a swallow beneath the loose collar of his shirt, an informal thing, easy to work in, and in no way neat enough for this conversation after nearly a day’s work.

“I’ve had him since I was a child,” Will answers, and Hannibal watches as the younger man folds his hands behind his back for want of knowing what to do with them. “I suppose he’s trained me as much as I’ve trained him.”

Hannibal’s smile gathers beneath his eyes.

He does not bother to lessen his own height, the length of his strides, lean legs clad in snug trousers, polished boots glinting. He is well aware of his own imposing carriage, immaculately kept, each hair swept into place, face smooth, cravat puffed. It is an advantage, he anticipates, rather than a hinderance.

“Are you in need of training, still?” Hannibal wonders, as he bends at the waist and reaches to the grass, eyes up along the length of Will’s body. He grasps the stick that was left at the gardener’s feet, lingering only a beat longer than necessary, before stepping away again. Only when he hears Will exhale his relief does he throw the stick down the length of lawn.

Winston takes off running again, delighted to have a new person to play with, and Will watches him go, so he does not have to watch Hannibal so close to him, having moved a step when he had thrown the stick, not stepped back.

“I -” Will swallows, draws his brows and raises them, unsure how to even answer without appearing rude or speaking out of line. “I would hope he keeps me toeing the line,” Will ventures, at length, “but I am always looking to improve if there is something you would like me to do better. Differently.”

Eyes quick to slip to Winston again when the dog returns the stick, victorious, and sets it at Hannibal’s feet, just against his polished boots before it rolls off to the grass again, leaving a smear of drool where Winston had proudly held the stick aloft.

“I find little amiss,” Hannibal tells him, amused at the deference, hiding his disgust with the mess at his feet. He watches the dog sit, tail slipping over the grass in his joy before he whines, a demanding thing, and paws at the stick for Hannibal to throw it again. He bends, reluctantly, and takes it up again. “I have seen you work the property, attentive to the plants and animals both - you have quite a skill, Will, do not think it goes ignored.”

He tosses the stick again, curls his hand into a fist and keeps the displeasure from his expression at the slickness in his palm. Slobber he can wash away. The way Will regards him is worth the patience until he does.

“Thank you.” The words are softly spoken, with but tangible relief. Unexpected praise, but enough that the misgiving as to Hannibal’s visit to the garden seems to fade, and Will’s shoulders loosen.

“Although, there is something,” Hannibal murmurs, turning towards Will. He begins to walk towards the house with long, ambling steps, pleased when Will keeps attentively at his heel.

More pleased still when he rests a hand on the younger man’s shoulder and he does not withdraw, providing the added benefit of removing at least a little saliva from Hannibal’s palm.

“Sir?”

“Hannibal,” he corrects him mildly, and Will’s brows knit with a quick glance to the house. “I wondered, Will, if there were any chance I might have fresh-cut flowers in my room. I know you spend a great deal of time tending them, and so if it’s an imposition on your hard work -”

“None.” Will’s smile widens, bright as the sun off the pond’s glassine surface. “I keep a small bed of cutting flowers just for it, and if I were to take a few of the less prominently positioned roses -” He catches himself, quieting his enthusiasm. “If you’d like, I could do it now.”

Hannibal smiles, a thing that doesn’t quite reach his eyes just to see if Will notices, but he seems contented to hold his own for the time being. Then, Hannibal’s expression warms further, genuine, and he watches how Will registers the change, entirely subtle and almost impossible to see, but he sees it.

His cheeks warm and he swallows. Hannibal wishes he could reach out and let his fingers feel the shift in temperature over Will’s skin, like clouds passing over the sun.

“I would hate to intrude on your time.”

“Not at all,” Will laughs, a soft thing, turns to look towards the roses he has in mind for Hannibal’s room, mind working quickly already with how to position them and how many to cut, where to set them in the room. He has been within the house before, it is not forbidden to him, but he has little to do inside when his work is here. A brief flicker of his tongue against his lips and Will turns his eyes to Hannibal again, as the other inclines his head, grateful.

“I trust you will find the room, or shall I wait with you?”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Will allows, running a hand back through his hair, almost shy. “I’m sure you’re very busy.”

Reading the same books.

Drawing the same views.

Seducing the same upper-class sons and daughters that he’s already had more times over than he cares to recall.

Hannibal hums, but allows the artifice. “Later then. As you insist on not keeping me, I insist on not rushing your work. This evening, perhaps, to enjoy them after supper.”

Will’s smile comes quick again and he nods, keeps his head ducked as he drops his hand for Winston to nuzzle against. He clicks his fingers and sends the dog on its way before looking up at Hannibal again.

“I will make sure I have them ready for you, sir.”

“Hannibal.”

Will swallows, presses his lips together before parting them.

“Hannibal.” Tone softer, words warm, and Will waits for Hannibal to nod, a small thing, before he turns to go. Waiting for permission, polite and beautiful and able to carry himself well despite the lingering smell of animals and earth around him. Hannibal works his bottom lip between his teeth and releases it with a hum.

Yes. This one will certainly be worth the chase.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You smell of manure,” she remarks, cheeks flushed from the start, and a smile curving up the corner of her lips._
> 
> _“I do,” comes the cheery reply, grin wide and eyes narrowed in amusement. “I’ve been toiling in the fields, breaking my back for a crust of bread to eat.”_
> 
> _“Stop it,” Alana laughs, and pushes her lips into a semblance of a frown though her eyes still show her smile. She watches the woman in front of her, hair back into a severe tail, just like her horses wear, shining blue-black and somehow immaculate, despite her busy day. And though she does not work for crusts of bread, Beverly Katz works harder than most of the men on staff._

Supper is without incident.

Amicable conversation over a small but hearty meal, overseen by Hannibal who can’t resist the urge to contribute to the kitchen staff’s endeavours. Mutton boiled with freshly plucked herbs, crumbly pasties in rich white wine sauce, wine in temperate portions, bread pudding and lemon cream.

Hannibal turns the spoon over in his mouth, crisp summer lemons sparkling sweet against his tongue. He glances towards the clock, eyes only turned away for an instant, but enough that Mischa - seated at the far end of the table from him - perks a brow.

“What is your agenda tonight?”

He regards her with a smile, just in the corners of his eyes, and dips his spoon again into the custard. “Agenda?”

She laughs, sweet as a lark’s song, and brings her napkin to her lips. “I misspoke. What is _on_ your agenda for the evening?”

“Nothing worth troubling yourself over,” he answers amicably.

There is a pluck of energy to the house now, alleviating the dreary ennui that had captured the siblings for far too long. Miss Bloom sits at Mischa’s side, having ensured she had the particular dress - pale peach, in warm offset to the snowy pale of the girl’s skin - was found and readied for dinner, after her lessons.

“Nothing worth troubling over at all, I hope?”

Hannibal’s brows lift at the question, and he settles back in his chair, high-backed and nearly too large even for his height. “No trouble at all,” he murmurs to Alana, slender fingers curving around his glass of wine. Every movement is an unfurling, as though the heir himself were made of shadow, graceful and entirely untenable.

She watches him a moment more, watches Mischa in turn, and demures her smile behind her hand. “My apologies if I misspoke.”

“You did not,” Mischa assures her, but Miss Bloom is perceptive in her own quiet way, and curiosity still sparkles in her eyes as to what her charge, and her charge’s notorious brother, are scheming.

“I had planned on reading in the sitting room,” Hannibal replies, eyes on his sister as she tilts her head. “Plato.”

“Republic?”

“Symposium.”

Narrowed eyes and a small smile and Alana allows her eyes to slip from Hannibal to Mischa again as she takes up her wine to sip quietly, saying nothing. Hannibal appears as much at ease as he is on edge, something in the air around them like the lingering promise of an early summer storm.

“You look rather dressed for a function,” Hannibal remarks, setting his glass down and leaning forward again. “Are you expecting company?”

“Just that of a friend.”

“Mischa.” A tilt of his head, a narrowing of eyes, and Mischa’s smile widens to an innocent, pretty little thing.

“Alana and I were going to go for a walk in the evening, to enjoy the weather. And why not wear something lovely for the occasion? I dress for myself, after all, Hannibal.”

“I’m certain that you do, only.”

A grin appears between them, and finally Alana lifts her hand as if to beg reprieve, a laugh caught on her voice. She has always been one of the most fearless in the house when it comes to speaking up to the siblings.

“Is there any need for me to know what you’re both so conscientiously not discussing, in your discussion?”

“Calling it a ‘need’,” Hannibal considers, “is likely over-shooting.”

“A desire, then. I feel as if you’re both speaking Greek.” Mischa draws a breath and Alana glances to her, amusement in her eyes even as she shakes her head. “Please, do not.”

The youngest Lecter’s smile only widens. “We’re simply discussing our plans.”

“For the evening,” Hannibal adds, and Mischa nods primly.

“Plato and an evening walk.”

“I yield,” Alana sighs, slipping a dark twist of hair behind her ear. “I yield to you both, keep your secrets, I do not want them.”

She does not wait out the pleasant laughter of the siblings, excusing herself to ready for the walk with Mischa, and escaping from the room on soft-slippered feet. The heavy door, three times her height, clunks closed behind her, and the whisper of a voice against her shoulder nearly sends her right into the carved mahogany.

“Evening.”

“You’re going to make me swear,” whispers Alana, stifling a laugh as she presses her forehead to the door. Slowly, she turns, shoulders against it, and regards her hallway lurker. “You smell of manure,” she remarks, cheeks flushed from the start, and a smile curving up the corner of her lips.

“I do,” comes the cheery reply, grin wide and eyes narrowed in amusement. “I’ve been toiling in the fields, breaking my back for a crust of bread to eat.”

“Stop it,” Alana laughs, and pushes her lips into a semblance of a frown though her eyes still show her smile. She watches the woman in front of her, hair back into a severe tail, just like her horses wear, shining blue-black and somehow immaculate, despite her busy day. And though she does not work for crusts of bread, Beverly Katz works harder than most of the men on staff.

Her grin doesn’t fade, and she watches Alana until the other glances away, clears her throat, delicate and questioning all at once. Then Beverly relents with a sigh, sets her hands behind her back as a man would, when talking to a lady.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she apologizes, “though I have to admit since you did swear that one time it’s become a goal to hear you do it again.” Beverly tilts her head. “Why are you sneaking out of the house?”

Alana dismisses the reference to _that one time_ with only a prim tilt of her chin and no remark. She leans back against the door, fingers splaying across the flowers carved vining along its sides. “I’m not sneaking.”

“Skulking, then.”

“Neither that,” Alana muses. “And I’m only leaving the dining room.”

Beverly steps nearer, riding boots tapping softly against the floor. “Before the dining’s done, from the sound out of it.”

“I’m quite satisfied for now.”

“Like the cat that ate the canary,” the dark-haired woman responds, smile lingering crooked in the corner of her lips, unpainted by rouge as if in perfect counterpoint to Alana’s quiet grace.

She stands as a whole in opposition, truth be told, slick breeches clinging to her legs beneath a long-tailed waistcoat, her elegant neck hidden away beneath a high collar and a fluffed cravat. A curiosity, certainly, when all the other women of the house wear trailing afternoon dresses thin as shifts, long sleeves draping from bared shoulders, hair curled long against their collarbones.

Alana lifts her eyes to Beverly’s again and her eyes narrow in amusement. “The canary’s safe for now, but the cat’s grown wise to its presence. Little hints of song that carry throughout the house.”

“In warning or in joy?”

“In joy, curiously,” Alana remarks, and she rocks herself forward off the door to accept the arm gallantly offered to her, to put space between them and the siblings still at banter. “As to what end, the cat -”

“Cats.”

“Katz,” Alana laughs. “We remain uncertain.”

“You have lived with them enough,” Beverly replies, leading Alana through the corridor and to the expansive stairs to lead to the rooms above. “You know that if one is joyous it bodes more trouble than when both are. They both tend to keep their deviousness directed within the family.”

“I don’t think this is the case, this time.”

“Then there will be some poor collateral damage,” Beverly smiles, stopping to let Alana walk a few more steps and slip from her arm to her hand, squeezing it gently before letting her go. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

Alana smiles, small and almost demure if there wasn’t a spark of excitement in her too. A clever and beautiful woman, who keeps quiet often but knows a lot more than people believe she could. She and Beverly have found good company in each other since Beverly was hired to work with the horses, when Mischa was old enough to learn to ride.

“Is it cold outside?” Alana asks, for want to have Beverly here a moment longer, if that, and finds the taller woman tilts her head, eyes warm with understanding, no need to bring it to light between them in words.

“It is crisp enough to require a light coat, though I would not worry for rain.”

“Thank you for the escort,” Alana responds, dipping into a curtsy on the stairs, and watching with a blush as Beverly bends into a bow.

“Thank you for the information,” she answers, with another rakish grin as her steps carry her backwards. “I’ll have to keep an ear out for this song you’ve heard. I imagine soon enough we’ll hear it all throughout the grounds.”

“No creature can deny its nature, I suppose.”

The words are coy, as Alana turns to rest her hand against the bannister and continue up the stairs. It’s not a moment too soon, as Mischa sweeps through the room on barefeet.

“You’re not dressed? Alana,” she sighs, feigning a greater dismay than she truly feels, born of youthful excitement and perhaps one more glass of wine than strictly necessary. “We’ll lose the last of the sun if you delay any longer.”

“To say nothing of the impropriety in taking dinner undressed,” Beverly murmurs, but Mischa’s quick to catch it and turns a look of dry amusement over her shoulder.

“Do not distract, Beverly.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Lady Lecter. In truth, I imagine I hold Miss Bloom’s attention most readily.”

“Continue imagining then. _Elsewhere_ ,” Mischa groans, half-bending over the railing in exasperation, and Beverly laughs.

“I shall endeavor to do just that,” she agrees, watching for a moment more the blush across Alana’s cheeks before turning to take her leave.

It is a hurried affair, dresses strewn to and fro with no explanation yielded to Alana as to why Mischa has worked herself into such a fuss for an ordinary after-dinner walk through the grounds. Her hair is pinned up, taken down again, curls refitted into a knot and loosened just to allow a few to graze her cheek. Alana remains calm, despite the flurry of activity, and only as they’re hurrying back out does she stop.

“Oh, I’ve not changed my own dress - Mischa, a moment -”

But she stops, a hand against the bedroom door, as Mischa’s harried rush becomes a languid saunter, little steps that shift her dress delicately across her ankles.

“Will,” Mischa exclaims lightly. “What an entirely unexpected surprise.”

Alana tilts herself further into the corridor, sees the familiar wild curls of the boy who tends the grounds. She says nothing, leans back and sets her back to the jamb just to listen.

“Miss Mischa."

“Mischa," she corrects, the smile evident in her tone. Alana can almost imagine her small hand curling in her dress, flirtatious and little, tone turning coy. “I was just going for a walk and then -” A sigh, dismissive - _it doesn’t matter, I won’t walk now, I have no need to_. It explains the hurry, the worry, the strange behavior in general, and Alana’s eyes narrow before she turns her head to listen more.

“Those are such beautiful roses, did you bring them for me?”

“I’m -” Will’s laugh is a breath, small, and Alana knows that he has ducked his head, straightened his shoulders, appearing at once poised and frightened, like a pup in a new environment, though he has been in this house longer than even Alana has. “I’m afraid they have a home already.”

“In such a beautiful vase, of course they do.”

Alana leans a little more, can see the pale roses Will holds, a beautifully arranged bouquet, with curled leaves and heavy buds, the smell is strong enough to waft this far, even, beautifully careful for flowers by a man who has a gentle hand with anything living.

She watches as Will sighs, smiles, and selects a rose from the middle to pluck from the arrangement, presenting it to Mischa with a gentle graceful bow.

“My lady, I will not be so thoughtless when next I collect a bouquet. Will you forgive me until then?”

Alana can see the tensing of Mischa’s shoulders, unused to being denied what she wants, and so politely. Yet Will is just as much a gentleman in his follow-through as he is in presentation. But he is nervous, caught between Mischa Lecter and - most likely - her brother for whatever game the two are playing.

Mischa does not yet take the rose, but rather follows the curve of a pale peach petal with her fingertip.

"Until then," she agrees, playfully chastening, "but only just. And -"

Inhaling as though startled, Will's brows lift in tandem, blue eyes wide.

" - only if you might help me secure it behind my ear." Tilting her head, Mischa gathers her hair, bright as gold, within the graceful bend of her hand, to bare her ear and neck in kind to the young man whose cheeks glow as warm as the rose he holds.

Will's voice goes, as if his collar is too tight against his throat, roughened. "There are thorns -"

"There often are," Mischa agrees, dark eyes turned to him from their almondine corners, gathering in pleasure. Will holds a moment more, fingers white against the blue vase on his hip, and holding his breath, sets it aside. He digs in his pocket, apologies steady as his breathing is not, and removes a small knife to sever the long stem, and notch the thorns smooth.

"Better this way, for the lady of the house."

"Not yet," she chimes, lashes long against her cheek as Will sets the blossom behind her ear. Its petals unfurl against her skin, both flushed with all the torrid promises of spring, and he tucks a curl atop its stem before stepping back. And back.

"There are thorns," Alana notes, and heat immolates the freckles on Will's cheeks. He manages an apology, stammering and rushed, and crouches to the carpet runner.

Hannibal's eyes meet Mischa's over the young man's back, and sharpen in delight.

"Hello, Will."

A jerk, minimal, as Will pricks himself on a thorn and sets them into his pocket to dispose of later. He takes up the vase and stands, careful to keep his bleeding finger from the blue vessel, as he turns to face Hannibal, expression one of a startled animal.

“Sir.”

“Hannibal.”

“Hannibal,” Will swallows, parts his lips and holds the vase closer to his chest, not shoving it at the man, they are, though, for him. “I’m sorry, I was -”

“Right on time.” Hannibal smiles, allows his eyes to move to Mischa moment, noting the rose, noting the pleased smile that tilts her lips and the pride that tugs her chin to raise. It suits her, the pale bloom, but as Will still holds the roses Hannibal knows that in that, at least, she could not sway the boy. His eyes slip to the vase, to the hands that hold it. To the blood, curling against the side of Will’s finger.

“You’re hurt.”

Will swallows again, shakes his head with a small laugh, raises his hand to look, and smears the blood away with his thumb, the little injury not deep enough to bleed more than it has.

“It’s no trouble. More mess than pain.”

“May I see?”

Will watches the hand that Hannibal holds out for him, untouched by work or duty and smooth as satin. He shifts the vase to his hip again and obediently holds out his thumb, lips parting in silent protest as Hannibal folds his long fingers around the younger man’s roughened hand. A bead of scarlet is drying there already, but Hannibal clucks his tongue against his teeth.

“I studied medicine, you know -”

“Briefly,” Mischa clarifies, ever helpful. “Not to the entirety of a degree.”

Hannibal raises his eyes only to Will, and with a bare press of fingers against his palm, releases his hand. “Enough,” he amends. “Come. I’ve something for this, if you’ll bring the flowers to my room.”

Will nods, a quick and almost nervous before stepping back to allow Hannibal to pass him, to lead to the room Will knows well enough. His eyes skim over Mischa, an apologetic duck of his head, and over Alana, blinking at her like he had entirely forgotten she was there. He offers another little nod, apology there as well, and follows Hannibal.

It has been years, now, since he has been to Hannibal’s room, and the house appeared much bigger then, to little seven-year-old eyes as he and the older boy raced up the stairs and caught each other panting in the large bedroom. It has been a long time, and something tugs at Will to draw a smile from him, a fond memory, never a bad one.

But with time grows distance, and that, he has resigned himself to believe is inevitable.

“You once packed a graze on my leg with mud and leaves, and claimed it would heal it, do you plan to do the same now?” Will asks him, keeping up but obediently a few steps behind Hannibal as they walk.

Hannibal’s smile widens before he can stop it happening, but with his back to Will, he has time to temper it by force of habit. “The mud I will forgo this time, and the leaves - only of a particular sort.” He steps back, to let Will enter, and with a vicious pleasure in the narrow look he sends Mischa, he closes the door behind himself.

“I’d nearly forgotten,” he tells Will, careful now to keep his distance when Will’s shoulders draw a little tighter. The younger man cradles the flowers against his chest and seeks out a place to put them, deciding on the drawing desk beside the window that overlooks the interior courtyard.

He fluffs the flowers with a brush of his fingers, inhaling softly as their scent is stimulated and spreads itself into the room. “I suppose it isn’t worth remembering, really.”

“Nearly,” Hannibal repeats again, gently. At a small cabinet, his fingers touch across a number of bottles, darkened glass and hand-written labels noted in elegant script.

He selects one in particular, and gathering a strip of gauze, returns languidly towards Will. “You tripped over a stone on the pathway to the woods. You were very valiant, holding back your tears.” He parts his lips with his tongue, upturning the small bottle onto the gauze and setting it aside, before offering his hand to Will. “I thought you very brave.”

Will draws his free hand through his hair and holds his other out, allowing it to be turned so Hannibal can see the cut better. He watches delicate hands take the gauze, tenses in anticipation for pain and finds it is easier when expected.

“I think we were hunting for ghosts that day,” Will recalls, amused, brows furrowing a little and breath clicking in his throat as he releases it, slowly takes another. The roses fill the room with their scent and Will feels almost dizzied by it. The door closed, the space a private place he has not been allowed into for a long time, he feels like he’s invading it.

The desk is just the same, though now neat where it had once been controlled chaos, large, by the window, the chair before it pushed neatly in. The bed is made, careful and tidy, pillows taking up only what they need to - no more enough for pillow forts than when the two of them had raided the house for every one they could find, to build one and share it together.

“Thank you,” Will says, regarding Hannibal from beneath his fringe.

“A tincture of witch hazel. Some improvement over mud and leaves, one hopes.”

Their eyes connect for a moment before slight smiles tug them apart, and Hannibal releases his hand. He straightens, as he turns, and it’s as if in an instant he’s grown older than the moment that passed between them. As the room has changed, so has he. Perfect dress and perfect carriage, perfect words and perfect demeanor. Not a hair or stitch out of place, not a beat of his heart that is not noticed and allowed.

The years between them grew vast, and quickly. Afternoons spent scattering fish in the pond or patrolling the woods with sticks in hand became afternoons, for the Lecter heir, spent inside practicing his penmanship. His recitations. His manners. His music. He could not play because his teachers would not let him. He could not go out because he had to dress for a social. He would not come because there was no reason to, with adventures sought in much darker places than the woods ever were to them, together.

Will lets the shiver pass through him, and steps back, towards the door. “Was there anything else I can do for you, si? Hannibal,” he corrects, and Hannibal closes the cabinet, looking towards the man as his tone becomes polite once more.

Defferent.

Some small part of him feels that tug again, that warmth, before he swallows it down and away. Hannibal tilts his head, inclines it to accept the offer but all at once decline it.

“No, thank you, Will.”

The younger man smiles, directs his eyes away and sets his hands together before letting them drop to his sides. He nods, just once, and turns to open the door, careful and quiet. He has almost closed it when Hannibal calls his name again.

“Yes?”

“Perhaps you will join us for breakfast in the morning,” Hannibal says, watching the way emotions run across Will’s face like shadows over grass before the man swallows and turns his eyes to the floor.

Years since this, too, was not even a question. They would share meals and space and worlds within their imaginations. Now it feels as though Will is being invited to the palace. It feels unwise to say yes, incredibly rude to say no, and he finds himself caught, breath held and mind whirring, unable to answer.

“We take it late, on Saturdays, 9 AM,” Hannibal coaxes. “Perhaps if you were worried for the animals, you would have time to care for them before joining us.”

“I -” Will licks his bottom lip into his mouth and finds a smile pulling at his lips. “I would enjoy that very much. Thank you.”

“Good night, Will.”

Hannibal does not turn to watch him go, but listens to the door latch shut, the footsteps that recede through the house now quiet. He looks to the flowers on the desk, cream roses that blush to pink where their petals curve, proud purple spires of delphiniums, clusters of crimson phlox. He traces their shapes, all fragile beneath his fingers, and imagines that when Will blooms for him, he will feel softer still than any of the garden’s blossoms.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Will blinks, allows his eyes up to the table and sees that, in fact, it is fully set, for upwards of eight people, despite there being half that number here. He swallows and looks to Alana for help._
> 
> _Chastising himself for not offering first, Hannibal eases the moment instead by graciously extending a hand. Alana glances from the motion, to Will, to the chair at Mischa's side, and gives a quick nod, wide-eyed._

Hannibal considers Will, as he considers his clothes.

Fingers graze each jacket, every one suited for its own purpose, whether riding or walking, a dinner party or an afternoon tea. They wait for him there, pressed into clean lines for him to work himself inside of, stitch by stitch, his to be used as he pleases. That isn’t to say he’s without affection for them, certainly each one holds particular memories, some very fond, but they are a means to an end. They exist to aid in Hannibal’s achievements, worn until their need is met and then returned to wait amongst so many others.

Some coats, Hannibal wears in harsher times than others. They take a beating in stride, whatever he doles out is accepted without complaint. Those in the city, in particular, and in the gentlemen’s clubs that he frequents.

Some are made of softer stuff.

Hannibal will be gentle with him, he decides, if only out of thanks for the victory that Will Graham will provide. He will return him the same as when he found him, with no new marks or wear. Simply used to suit a purpose, the right fit for the occasion, and then let be once more.

He slips into a muslin shirt, the color of fresh milk, starched collar stiff against his throat. A waistcoat of robin’s egg blue, with a pale wheat-colored cravat fluffed above it. He decides on an equally mild tailcoat, a blue just slightly darker than the vest beneath, above pantaloons of pale cream. Hannibal checks his stockings and the garters that hold them in place, and slips into his riding boots before finally making his way to breakfast.

He hopes to match the spring garden in which Will flourishes like his well-tended flowers, entertaining himself with the thought of similar cultivations with careful hands and close attention, smiling slightly as he enters the dining room.

The smile falters.

Mischa is there, already, her hair falling loose and unrestrained around her shoulders. Shoulders scarcely covered in her night dress, a scandalously thin drape of white that conceals what lies beneath but certainly not the shape it all. She’s not even bothered with a dressing gown, her feet bare, as if she’d simply awoken just there at the table.

Hannibal’s eyes flicker narrow before he continues in. “Good morning, dear sister. Are you well today?”

She hums, a gentle tilt of her head, and Hannibal can see that although far less thought went into her clothes that to his, a lot of it was directed, instead, to her make up and hair. Made to look effortless yet entirely deliberate, carefully worked blush against her cheeks, brushed and coiled curls as they never would be had she merely left her bed this way.

“I slept in anticipation of it being a wonderful day, Hannibal, and I feel it will be exactly that.” She considers him, his put-together appearance, the fact that he has taken the effort as he so rarely takes for family alone. It’s amusing, it’s oddly sweet to see him try so hard, despite the nefarious reasoning behind it.

“Are you going riding?” She asks him, delicate brows up as she takes up her cup of tea, so thin the sun filters through the pattern for Hannibal to see before she takes a sip. “I thought we might enjoy breakfast together. But if you must go, you must. Will and I will find a way to entertain ourselves.”

Hannibal doesn’t give her the benefit of casting a glance at his own clothing, but wonders despite himself if he’s given the appearance of going riding, when it wasn’t what he meant to convey. He hums.

“Perhaps once we’ve eaten,” he allows, unbuttoning his jacket to slide into the seat at the far end of the table from her. Sunlight catches her from behind, through the expansive windows overlooking the grounds, and he hopes that the narrowing of his eyes seems only a squint against the brightness. “I would be remiss to leave before our guest appears.”

“Our guest?”

“Mr. Graham will be enjoying breakfast with us this morning,” Hannibal answers amicably. Mischa sets her foot against the seat of her chair, knee to her chest, and presses her thumb against her teeth in delight. Hannibal waits for her pleasure to fully flourish before adding, “We discussed it last night, after you retired.”

Mischa’s smile does not fade, but her eyes narrow in a way that it immediately changes from delight to deviousness, something darker in her youthful expression that Hannibal knows, proudly, she learned from watching him.

“It’s almost as though you want the victory to go to me, brother,” she says, setting both feet to the ground again. “You entertain wonderfully, but small talk is not Will’s forte. You’ll frighten him with your turns of phrase and clever wit.”

“He is clever enough.”

“Certainly, but not drowning in tedium as you and I are, he has things to think about and do. Your invitation will not be remembered fondly, he will not ask to come again.”

Hannibal considers the words, turns his eyes to the door and wonders if Will, truly, will not show up and claim being busy, claim chores and gardening and whatever else. No. Will has been raised to be a gentleman though his class suggests he can only be so in his carriage, not his position. He will come. He returns his eyes to Mischa and finds her smile wider.

“Roses and breakfast do not a paramor make, Hannibal. Not when a boy seeks a boy.”

“No?” Hannibal asks. He draws up straighter in his seat, hands folded neatly together on the table. “Pray tell, dear sister, from all that you know of such things - much, I’m certain -”

“A great deal,” she adds, pleased.

“Then do enlighten me, in your expertise, of how you might conduct yourself were you so endowed. I must say, it is far different from my side of the table,” he remarks, brows twitching a little higher. “Far fewer concerns of anything so loathsome in courtship as marriage, for example, of which neither of us know very much.”

Mischa lifts her chin, resting her hands together on her knee, taking the challenge and the slight in turn. “If you hold those practices in such disregard, darling brother, then why mimic them? They don’t apply to you, so why should anything so dreary as exchanging flowers? You would make him into a suitor and yourself just a blushing maid.”

Neither pay Miss Bloom any mind when she enters, dipping her head politely to both to take a seat beside Mischa. The siblings’ duel is only with each other, and though both are careful to prune Will’s name from their conversation, it hardly diminishes due to her presence.

“You would suggest I be more forceful, then, rather than toy with gentility.”

“It would be that, would it not? Toying with something you are far from, yourself.”

Hannibal can’t help but smile at this, savoring the sting of Mischa’s words, and how skillfully she bandies them. “And certainly your suggestions are meant only to aid me in what I am so entirely unaccustomed to in my own experience. I have, certainly, never found myself in these particular positions before.”

Alana spares him a glance and Hannibal responds only by allowing his smile to grow. Mischa seems delighted, entirely too aware of what Hannibal does for his own pleasure and their parents’ upset. They have lost hope in him finding a good wife and settling down. Perhaps when he is older, she knows they hope. She also knows they hope in vain.

She opens her mouth to say more and pull her brother into another verbal volley, but is stopped by a gentle knock on the open door.

Will stands there, dressed in perhaps the nicest clothes he owns, though they are too dark for breakfast, with a small smile and curls tamed back behind his ears. He ducks his head in a bow towards Mischa, Alana, turns his eyes to Hannibal and allows his lips to part with an unasked question before ducking his head and eyes away entirely.

“I apologize if I’m late,” he says. “It was very kind of you to invite me.”

“Will!”

Mischa is out of her seat and standing next to it, and Will finds himself unable to look anywhere at all but her feet, the way she is dressed and carrying herself.

“Mischa, good morning.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She sighs, clasping her hands in front of her and tilting her head. “Will you not sit by me? The table is set -”

Will blinks, allows his eyes up to the table and sees that, in fact, it is fully set, for upwards of eight people, despite there being half that number here. He swallows and looks to Alana for help.

Chastising himself for not offering first, Hannibal eases the moment instead by graciously extending a hand. Alana glances from the motion, to Will, to the chair at Mischa's side, and gives a quick nod, wide-eyed.

"Thank you, Lady Le- Mischa," Will corrects, nervous fingers smoothing his coat as he circles and waits. The youngest Lecter regards him with an easy smile, and lingers standing a moment more before draping into her seat again. Alana follows in turn, and Will glances towards Hannibal.

He smiles, faintly, just enough that it gathers lightly the muscles beneath his eyes, and both take their seats in tandem.

"I'm glad you could join us," Hannibal intones, watching as tea is brought from the kitchen, and several dishes in sequence after. "Mischa was just suggesting that I take a ride today. Perhaps -"

"You might show me your garden, while he does," Mischa chimes. "I would be, of course, entirely in your capable hands - your guidance would be most welcome."

Will thanks the young woman who brings tea to him, following her movements and taking a breath as if to ask her name, before she departs and he turns back towards Mischa. "It isn't my garden," he corrects gently. "It is yours. That is, your fami-"

"Then perhaps I will show you my garden," she grins, ignoring the low hum from the far end of the table.

Will laughs, a small and nervous thing, and reaches to take a small cube of sugar for his tea. Hannibal regards him, from two seats away, alone at his end of the table and happy to play king of it, for now, as Mischa sends him her entirely unveiled smile of victory when Will agrees.

“You will have to tell me all about the flowers,” Mischa says, “I see them from the window every day and only know that roses take up most of the planted land we have here, but none of the others.”

“A lot are wild flowers,” Will says, careful to adjust his body language so that everyone at the table is seen, Hannibal included, to his left. He casts an eye to him briefly with a small smile. “Honeysuckle and primrose. You have a grove of celandine by the lake.”

“You will need to point them out,” Mischa smiles, turning to Alana with a graceful tilt of her head, hand up to push some of her hair back behind her shoulder, enough for Will to avert his eyes back to his tea. “I will become an expert in no time. Far surpass Hannibal’s knowledge of the garden.”

“Of the flowers in the garden,” Hannibal corrects, eyes on Will again. “Not of the herbs.”

Will’s smile is briefly entirely genuine before he licks his bottom lip into his mouth and nods.

“They are where we had planted them, many more added since," he confirms, taking a piece of toast from under the soft teatowel only once Mischa and Alana have taken one for themselves. He reaches for the butter, entirely aware that he is, despite his best intentions, the center of attention again.

"It's wonderful that you've been able to take over for your father," Alana adds. "Please give him my best. He's earned his rest, and you seem to share his affinity for groundskeeping. We're lucky to have you here."

Hannibal lifts his cup as if in toast to her words, always wise but perhaps a bit too clever at times. The motion is mirrored by Mischa, and Will smiles a little more, and a little more uneasy, all at once.

"I've not seen the master or madam of the house in some time," he asks. "I hope they're not unwell."

"They are in perfect health, thank you," Hannibal assures him, unable to suppress a rueful twinge. "They've gone to the summer house, and we declined the invitation in favor of remaining here."

"Oh?" Will's brow creases.

"Hannibal doesn't care for the country," Mischa smiles, pinching off a portion of bread to smear liberally with preserves.

Hannibal doesn't disagree. "We are far enough from civilization as we are, I needn't be further still."

"He prefers London," she adds, as mild in tone as she is not in her intent.

"I've little care for the affectations of being a gentleman farmer, when I might have museums instead of manure, and society instead of sheep. Though one might argue at times the similarities are striking, and the smell in turn."

Mischa takes a bite of her bread with a smile, eyes briefly to Will before returning to her brother, and then casually seeking a pattern on the ceiling when Hannibal seems to understand his entirely guided misstep.

Will presses his lips together gently, and parts them before taking up his tea. Alana looks between him and Hannibal, to her charge, and sets her teeth together enough to tighten her jaw.

“I personally prefer the country,” she says. "It is much quieter, certainly cleaner.”

“As do I,” Mischa sighs, drawing herself to sit straighter in her chair as she regards Will with a tilt of her head. “Once I am grown I will live nowhere else, and visit my uptight brother in his filthy city only once a year.”

Will allows a smile then, but hardly at anyone’s expense. He has never been to the city for more than a day, and he cannot fathom living there for longer. It is so loud, so busy and full of people. Perhaps he has lived so long secluded that he doesn’t know the joys he is missing, but he says nothing for a while. The atmosphere settles once more as Alana inquires of Mischa about her lessons, of their plans after her visit to the garden, as she has the harpsichord that evening, languages at four.

Will turns to reach for the eggs, allowing himself to turn more to Hannibal, another look, gentle, perhaps forgiving for a slight not meant, and he clears his throat.

“And after your ride?” He asks, polite, careful. “What do you plan to do with the day?”

Hannibal, to his credit, does not look towards Will, and so avoids the risk of letting his first thoughts show through in his expression. Temperance and patience, he reminds himself, and smiles at the absurdity of such a notion.

"I thought to sketch, perhaps."

"You still draw?" Will asks, and their eyes meet in a shared smile before parting again.

"When I've time, motivation, subject matter of interest," Hannibal answers. "In all likelihood no better than when we were dragging sticks through the mud."

"Ah," laughs Mischa. "I'd nearly forgotten that you both knew each other as children. Mother mentioned it to me when we found out dear Will would be joining our happy home."

Hannibal cracks his egg with a few gentle raps of his spoon, consummately focused, it seems. "Quite well, in fact."

"You're like brothers, then," Mischa adds, smiling bright.

Will’s cheeks color and he looks away back to his breakfast again, concentrating too hard on his bread, his egg that he salts and adds a pinch of pepper to, as Hannibal answers, seemingly, for the both of them.

“We were. Regrettable that time and obligations pulled us apart like they did. But no time like the summer to return what was lost.”

At least in that, their sentiments are the same.

Mischa’s smile turns, for a moment, false - a pretty doll-look before she laughs, draws another curl up behind her ear and turns to Will just to watch him until he looks up and offers her a little smile in turn. Then she leaves him be. Contented, it seems, to keep the table quiet as they eat.

Will savors the food, his own never worse than this, himself not poor, but it’s rare he gets so have such a drawn out meal and with company of more than just his father. It’s oddly soothing, like a memory from long before, when he and Hannibal would take their sandwiches to share in the garden and look for Will’s dad by the lake so he could palm them some dried peaches or sweets.

Will’s chest tightens a little as he thinks of Hannibal’s words, a hope flickering there as it hasn’t for a while. They had never parted badly, but this is the first time either had made contact beyond the occasional smile in the hallway.

Another round of tea is served, as they finish their plates bit by bit, and as much food seems to be carried away as brought to them. Hannibal watches, surreptitious, as Will eats, taking pleasure in whatever degree of ease he's managed in spite of obvious discomfort. He wishes Will had sat next to him instead, and sighs softly at the thought of touching their knees together beneath the table.

"I have missed -" Hannibal pauses, just a beat "- having a friend here."

Mischa curves a brow, ignoring Alana's pointed look to let it go. "I thought you had many. You seem to have visitors enough, though perhaps my assumptions have deceived me."

"One should never assume all who call intend on friendship."

"Certainly not," she agrees, but Hannibal does not let the implication hang longer than a moment.

"I'm afraid we've lost our manners," Hannibal says to Will. "Do you have particular plans for today?"

Will blinks, brings his napkin up to dab his lips and clears his throat. He wishes he could have the freedom of a lazy day with a book, an early evening with his rods by the river. Some days he has the time, he is not a prisoner, but the Lecter estate is large enough to house a small village were it interested in doing so.

“I will be in the east grounds today,” Will says. “Perhaps the orchards come evening.”

“You’re not in the kennels today?” Alana asks. “Or the stables?”

Will smiles. “The peaches need me more than the animals do, this time of year. I will go by before bed to check on them all, but Beverly is always kind enough to look out for the dogs when I’m unable to.”

Alana’s cheeks warm at the name and she smiles before nodding. “I hope the day is not too long and you have time with them.”

“I always have time for them,” Will replies, comfortable, in this, at least, before directing his eyes between the siblings who just listen. He swallows, immediately embarrassed, shakes his head. “There were few pups this year.”

Mischa makes a pleased sound and leans closer in her chair.

“Pups!”

“Just one litter,” Will says, turning to look to Hannibal to see if he has any interest in this at all, uncomfortable with hosting a conversation where only some people are involved. Will wonders if that is a lesson taught in high society - the ability to control a room as he so clearly cannot.

Hannibal, in truth, was unaware that they still kept more dogs on the premises than the one that Will brought with him. He does not partake in coursing, but hunts alone. For a moment, Hannibal recalls the cold nose and warm tongue that greeted him in the garden only the day before, and tempers his displeasure at the memory of that sensation. Instead, he turns his thoughts to Will, who always spoke with such childish enthusiasm about the animals. He played host to a hoard of them, in his imagination, seven as Hannibal recalls it distantly, all with names and personalities of their own.

A soft smile appears, entirely genuine.

"It's good that Winston has company," Hannibal says. "How many are there, in total?"

Will draws a breath, eyes towards the ceiling in thought. "Ten, now. Eleven if you count my own, but he's not really amongst them."

"And will you keep them all?"

"It's up to your father," Will shrugs.

"I imagine if they're capable, he would want to," adds Alana. "Hunting dogs are worth a great deal if well-bred."

"Has he named them?" Mischa asks. "Are they very small still?"

"If they're in Will's care, it should be his choice to name them," Hannibal remarks, as much pleasure in defying his father as in gifting the dogs to one who is deserving of them. "He's not gone coursing or fox hunting in years. They're more yours than his," he tells Will, gently.

A blush truly suits Will, pinking not only his cheeks but the bridge of his nose, just beneath his eyes, and they, too, become almost more blue with the shift in warmth on his skin.

“I couldn’t -”

“You should,” Mischa agrees, and Hannibal’s brows draw that she would allow his decision to stay this way, and not argue her own instead. “You should name them. Father will no doubt keep them if they are well trained, even if he does not hunt perhaps he will use them for something else. But do name them. If you name them he cannot take them.”

Alana blinks at her charge, turns to Will, and finds him regarding her with a soft expression. It has been years, and Winston the last he had been permitted to keep. Alana wonders how many puppies he has helped come into the world and has had to watch be taken away from him.

“Perhaps you can help me,” Will suggests, but he turns quickly to Hannibal, extending the offer to him, as much as to his sister. He can see the strange war of expressions on the older boy’s face, and ducks his head in deference. “I am unimaginative when it comes to names, I’m afraid.”

"I would be honored to help," grins Mischa, her enthusiasm earnest, and in truth entirely charming. As her youthful pleasure wins out over propriety, she sets a foot against the seat of her chair again, with no mind at all for how unladylike it might be.

Will averts his eyes only out of his own wary politeness, and glances to the elder Lecter again, as if awaiting news of his fate.

Hannibal can't help but wonder at the sudden change in direction his life has taken, that only a week before he was occupied with being beautifully bored at the Hellfire Club, and now finds himself soon to be ensconced in dogs.

"My dear sister speaks for us both," he murmurs against his tea, eyes crinkling a little in the corners.

"Are there enough that Miss Bloom might share the pleasure?" Mischa asks, and Will nods, brows lifting.

"Five."

"Hannibal," Mischa laughs, stretching a hand across the table. "Promise you won't give them any of those abhorrent Greek names. Or Italian. Something civilized."

"Greece and Rome were birthplaces of civilization," he reminds her, but Will's gaze draws his own, and Hannibal wishes he were so bold as to reach and smooth the furrow from his brow.

"Do you speak them?"

"Greek, Italian, and Latin," Hannibal admits. And it is an admission, reluctantly given. It's as though the walls erect around them again, the same ones that parted them as children, and now seem insurmountable. He feels an overwhelming need to apologize, for all the lessons ingrained in him. He wishes that they might speak of sword-fighting with sticks and playing with imaginary pets again.

And he recognizes how entirely silly those thoughts are, and clears his throat. "Perhaps Mischa is a better candidate for naming them after all."

"At least one will need to be foreign," Will encourages, smile genuine but little, sensing in that memory the gap between them as Hannibal does. But he recovers, quickly, with a nod, almost a bow, and turning again to the women he sits near.

"It will be good to have the pups socialized with others, I will happily take you."

Breakfast is finished and cleared away, and Will sits a moment more in slight discomfort before pushing himself to stand, ducking his head to Mischa and Alana, and when he turns, pressing his palm to his chest for a deeper bow to Hannibal. 

"Thank you for the invitation, it was a wonderful breakfast."

"And your company graced it beautifully."

Will's cheeks warm at the praise and he leaves them all to continue with his day, smiling and waving briefly to Mischa when she calls to remind him of their walk, soon.

Both siblings watch him go, until the heavy door finally slips closed and Mischa sighs, contented. “It looks as if you’ll be riding alone today, brother.”

“So it seems.”

Hannibal offers no more repartee than that. His thoughts are not in banter. They are held in the depth of Will’s bow to him, and in the memory of how his eyes lifted first. He watched Hannibal through enough of breakfast that the Lecter heir knows it was not only due to his sister’s state of undress. It was as if he was seeking something that Hannibal can no more find in himself than Will could, and the nearest either came was herbs planted long ago, and maps drawn in earth at the forest’s edge.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Will watches Mischa play with the squirming little dogs and smiles. He remembers how when she was born, Will had been allowed to stay with Hannibal so he didn't feel lonely with the entire household occupied with a new child. He remembers Hannibal's excitement, whispering to Will under the covers about how excited he was for a sibling, how the three of them would be the best of friends, how she would be part of their stories and adventures._

Mischa, to her great credit, keeps her steps steady as she makes her way through the garden, towards the kennels.

She has found, in the week past since her first foray into the flowers, that she rather enjoys being among them. In light tones, just loud enough to carry when the wind rises, she introduces them all to Alana in passing. Gentle turns of her wrist beneath heavy summer blooms, fingertips touching silky petals that hide within them fat-bodied bees, names given in English first and in Latin second - it all comes together and Mischa feels suddenly and wonderfully like a proper lady.

And to Miss Bloom’s credit, she entertains every introduction, unable to restrain a gentle amusement at Mischa’s sudden interest in horticulture.

“You’ve been spending a great deal of time on the grounds,” she notes, keeping slow stride alongside her charge. “It appears that Mister Graham has been of good influence.”

“I grew so tired of being ignorant of what goes on in my own home,” Mischa replies, bending to another flower, just to touch it, to watch the way it sways on its long stem. “If I am to have one of my own, or inherit this one, since Hannibal has no desire at all to marry, I need to know what I would be living with.”

“Very wise,” Alana replies, hands gentle before her as they make their way towards the lake, first, enjoying the shade there. She stops as Mischa does, overlooking the water. Across the way lie the well-tended green lawns of the estate, sometimes covered in bright rugs when the family is having a picnic, when they play petanque. When Hannibal feels the urge to dig himself from ennui, he practices skeet shooting. Sometimes he even hits the targets, if he bothers to look and aim.

“Will is very interesting to me,” Mischa adds, almost dreamily, before turning to Alana and smiling. “I enjoy him.”

The choice of words is deliberate, and Alana is not one to miss such particularities. She returns the smile and they walk a moment more before she answers. “What is it about his company that has so won him to your favor?”

Mischa rolls one shoulder in a shrug, lifting her eyes towards the sky as it reddens with the day’s passing. “He has a charming countenance. He humors my questions as if they were no trouble to him at all.”

“I’m certain they’re far from it,” Alana agrees. She lets her eyes fall to the path winding before them in thought, and adds carefully, “He has a gentle heart. The gardens suit him.”

“Oh?”

Alana makes a small sound, agreeable. “They require a certain caution. Too strong a hand would see them quickly bereft of the blooms that create their charm. Too absent, and they would wither.”

“He does seem to have very clever hands,” Mischa chimes, laughing mildly when Alana’s eyes briefly widen. They continue on, and after a time, Mischa regards her companion again. “Do you know him well?”

“Well enough to hope he remains with us,” she answers after a moment. “He is kind company, and a welcome friend.”

Mischa considers the words and nods, before flicking stray curls from her eyes like a horse might move in displeasure. Her aloofness seems almost put on, like her pleasure and attention. It tugs at Alana in a way she can’t explain, a cloying mixture of guilt and curiosity she can’t shake. For the moment, she allows herself the luxury of setting the thoughts away.

They approach the kennels from the south side of the grounds, walk around to the main door and knock to wait for Will to let them in. The pups are still too young to roam alone, and while their mother is contented to lie comfortable and relax, they are growing to be troublemakers and experts in seeking out the smallest holes to dig under and crawl out. The door is opened by a grinning Will, hair a mess and cheeks flushed from his work. The expression fades, not in displeasure but in embarrassment for his enthusiasm, too used to being told that it is uninteresting to the people of the household.

“You’ve come at a good time,” Will says, letting them through and carefully closing the door. The pups mull around their mother, some yipping and playing, others rolling in the straw, tiny paws wriggling, little tails twitching in pleasure. At the sight of the newcomers they move like a wave, fur and uncoordinated limbs, swarming towards them to nuzzle against ankles and warm hands bent to them.

“They’ve just been fed, they’ve a lot of energy to burn off,” Will explains.

“Oh my,” laughs Mischa, clapping her hands together. It earns a squeaky bark from one of the puppies, and she presses her hands to her mouth. “Look at all of them!”

Alana meets Will’s eyes, just an instant before the man averts them. A movement through the windows of the kennel catches her eye, like a shadow, and she only just restrains the sudden surge of pleasure.

“A moment,” Alana says, dipping her head politely to excuse herself, but Mischa quickly snares her hand.

“Oh, Miss Bloom, do stay?” With abandon, Mischa crouches and lets go of Alana to instead extend her hands to the puppies, nose wrinkling in delight when they lick at her fingertips. “How could you want to leave? They’re extraordinary!” she declares, lifting one of the tiny hounds - brown entirely, rather than saddled with white as the others are.

“I’ll return, I promise - your dress -”

“Never mind the dress,” grins Mischa. “Go, then, but do come back.”

Alana allows another smile towards Will before passing by him, a gentle hand on his shoulder, to the door that leads through towards the stables, careful to keep any curious little noses from being caught when she closes it again.

“You are the first,” Beverly declares, leaning on the pitchfork she had been using to sift the hay just moments before, “to resist those noisy smelly little things to come and talk to me.”

Alana takes one step, another, hands before her again and smile hidden by the ducking of her head. “They are sweet things.”

“They are very sweet things,” Beverly agrees, smiling, adjusting her lean just enough to almost drape across the handle that almost entirely holds her balance. “And there are five of them. Once you’ve been around the noises long enough they stop being sweet.”

“You are not such a cynic, surely.”

“I am until I return the next morning,” Beverly says, pushing herself to stand properly again. “And am greeted by those silly wet noses and the dopey grin of the man who cares for them. Then for another day I can handle the ruckus.”

“He is also a sweet thing,” Alana remarks, exhaling when Beverly rights herself again, only to find her breath caught once more when the other woman’s shoulders shift strong beneath her coat to plunge the pitchfork into hay once more. She receives an arched brow for her comment, but only for a moment before both women turn away with slight smiles.

“And she?”

“Far less so, but not without her moments.”

Beverly pitches aside another forkful of bedding and rests again, elbow propped against the handle. “And the eldest? I’ve not seen him in days, huffing about and finding new means by which to ask me to polish imaginary scuffs from his saddle.”

“Perhaps he simply enjoys watching you work,” muses Alana.

“As a cat enjoys watching a mouse attempt escape between its paws.”

Alana’s smile widens a little, before she forces it smaller for the sake of practicing propriety, though there is little more intention in it than that. “He is either in hiding, or away. Gone again to the city, perhaps.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t care,” Alana corrects her, amused. “So long as it’s one less cat to torment the mice…”

Beverly considers her words and guides her eyes to the door Alana had come through. Beyond, the yipping and happy whining of little creatures, soft words from Will and excited whispers from the younger Lecter. She leans the pitchfork away against the wall and beckons Alana closer, moving further into the stables so their voices will be masked by the soft whinnying of the horses already there, by the distance itself.

“I shudder to think what torment is being planned,” Beverly says quietly, drawing the back of her hand against her forehead with a sigh, chewing her lip before looking to Alana for an explanation. She just shrugs, an almost helpless gesture before folding her arms and glancing back over her shoulder.

“I do not understand them,” Alana says, voice quiet. “They have so much before them, such rich lives, and they waste them on petty cruelties.”

“I’ve always hated cats.” Alana tilts her head and Beverly snorts, shaking her own. “I have never found my name to be fitting.”

“I’ve nothing against cats,” Alana sighs. “But any creature that inflicts unkindness sheerly for the pleasure of it is beyond my fathoming.”

“That’s cats, entirely,” laughs Beverly.

Alana leans back against a stall gate, relaxing her arms to her sides. A brow lifts, and despite herself, she smiles, wry. “Not all.”

“So you favor certain cats.”

“Certain Katz, yes,” Alana allows, with an indulgent smile and eyes turned away as Beverly takes a step nearer her. “I worry for him, that’s all.”

Another step brings Beverly near enough to rest her hand against the old wood, beside Alana’s shoulder. She doesn’t lean nearer than that, but it’s enough for Alana to see the nearly cobalt gleam where the light reaches Beverly’s glossy hair, oiled back and slick. It’s enough for her to smell the sweetness of violets on her skin. Enough to just lift her hand and -

“It’s not your job to worry for him,” Beverly reminds her, and Alana presses her fingers back against the gate. “He’s a grown man. More likely than anything, they’ll embarrass themselves in the attempt.”

“I have seen embarrassment on him, but never on them,” Alana replies. "It is as though they play at who can make him blush the darkest, who can bring his voice to shake in answer."

"As boys do to girls in the schoolyard?"

"But they are all adults," Alana sighs and allows a small laugh. "I'd thought we had all grown up from that."

Beverly smiles, turning her head back to the wall dividing the puppies from the horses. She considers the gentle conversation there, both excited to be interacting with the dogs, and excited to be doing so together.

"I have not seen Mischa in here since she was very small, unless we have lessons. Perhaps it's not so bad she's making the effort."

"If I didn't know my charge I would think she sought to marry him."

Beverly snorts. She turns her dark gaze to Alana again. The younger woman raises her brows in the semblance of a shrug and returns her eyes to the divider.

“I can think of worse matches,” Beverly finally responds. “I can also think of fewer matches that would draw her parents’ ire, after parading so many suitors through only to see them all turned away.”

“Which, I expect, is her motivation. And it’s cruel.”

“Do you care for him?”

Alana blinks at the question, turning wide blue eyes to the other woman, who has yet to turn away from the divider between stable and kennel. “Do I -”

“Care for him.”

“I have a care for him, yes,” Alana answers, words lightly clipped. “And I have a care for not seeing him embarrassed by the whims of a spoiled little girl.”

Beverly draws a breath as if in consideration, but Alana can’t help but notice the ease of tension from her jaw, and smiles a little.

“And what of the other, then?”

“Hannibal?” Alana brings a thumb to her teeth and then lowers it again. “He can hardly be pursuant of our dear gardener as a suitor. Although the stories I’ve heard -”

“A great many of them, each worse than the one before it. Might he not also play at coursing this hare, then? Is it so far-fetched?”

"It -" Alana starts to protest but the point is made as Beverly turns her eyes to the wall dividing them again. Will can be heard teaching Mischa to give a command to the pups, before she repeats it.

"Poor boy," Alana says. Beverly sighs, eyes narrowing and mouth a thin line. She had not known Will as long as Alana, as long as Hannibal or Mischa, but what she knows, she likes. Will’s a hard worker, a friendly face and excellent with the animals, never once an unkind word from him, never once a yell or a curse.

Beverly thinks perhaps before he had met her he did not curse at all.

"I wish they would hunt within their class, if they sought a game." She shakes her head. "Because he is not one of them is no reason to suspect him weak and easy prey. He is smarter than both of their minds combined, were they ever to use them and bother."

Alana worries her lower lip, and releases it with a sigh. “Should I tell him?”

“Should you -” Beverly’s laugh, brash, cuts short her words. “Should you _tell_ him? To what end?”

“In the event - however unlikely - he thinks their advances genuine,” insists Alana, pressing a hand to Beverly’s coat, and with the other, lifting a finger to her lips to keep her quiet.

She blinks, holding her hands just where they are a moment more. Before her, Beverly’s starless-sky eyes darken even more, mouth parting just enough to release a breath, but enough in this movement alone to set Alana’s heart thumping heavy. They stand just so, a moment more, only an instant perhaps, but what feels like far longer. Alana, blushing dark, drops her hands but finds the one she used to hush the woman held in Beverly’s gloved hand, coarse leather rough against her skin.

“To what end for yourself, Miss Bloom.” Beverly presses her thumb in a slow circle to Alana’s palm, brows lifting. “We have only gossip and speculation, no overt proof of anything of which we’ve spoken. Theories that, if false, will prove you untrustworthy to him and to the Lecters. Theories that, if true, and so honestly told, will surely see you released from your service here.”

Eyes closing, lashes long against her dirt-scuffed cheeks, Beverly traces her lips across Alana’s fingers before releasing her.

“Let them play their games,” Beverly tells her, eyes darting with amusement to Alana’s hands, curling in her skirt. “And trust that he is wise enough to know.”

\---

Will watches Mischa play with the squirming little dogs and smiles. He remembers that when she was born, Will had been allowed to stay with Hannibal so he didn't feel lonely with the entire household occupied with a new child. He remembers Hannibal's excitement, whispering to Will under the covers about how excited he was for a sibling, how the three of them would be the best of friends, how she would be part of their stories and adventures.

He remembers watching Mischa grow up, watching her, too, blossom into the person she is now, but they had never been close, had never been more than familiar faces.

Watching her now, he finds himself falling into the same enthusiasm as Hannibal had, all those years ago. She is alive, youthful and so open to receiving new ideas and experiences. She accepts the joyful licking of the puppies, accepts Will’s instructions for how to treat them and play with them.

“And if I hold you like a baby, hm?” Mischa’s voice is soft, but no less eager for keeping herself hushed. She kneels against the soft straw, mindless of dirtying her dress, and cradles one of the puppies into her arms. On its back, it writhes, whining and fussing, and she clucks her tongue softly.

“Try petting her belly,” murmurs Will, watching as Mischa spreads her fingers over the pup’s stomach. She strokes tenderly, back and forth, and laughs little and sweet as the puppy quickly grows drowsy, settling into twitching paws and droopy eyes. “There she goes. You have a way with them, Miss Mischa.”

“You have a way with teaching,” she responds, grinning. Her eyes, dark as her brother’s, alight towards the young man who rests on one knee before her. Cheeks warming, she looks away again, towards the puppy dozing in her arms. “Rose, I think.”

“Rose?”

“Her name. I think it suits her.”

Will considers the little dog, curling towards Mischa’s body seeking the warmth there in the sleepy lovely way that puppies do.

"Rose," he agrees, committing the name and markings of the little girl to memory. Another puppy sets his paws against Will’s leg and he grins at it before gathering the dog up to hold in his palm.

"You can visit her any evening you like," Will tells Mischa. "Rose and any of the puppies. For a few weeks yet they will not leave the kennels, and then I will start training them for coursing, or anything your father would like them to be used for."

"May I keep Rose?"

Will blinks, surprised, draws a hand over his face in thought as the little door between the kennels and stables is opened again and Alana returns.

"She will grow to be a fairly large dog," Will warns gently. “Like Winston, maybe bigger."

Mischa doesn’t seem displeased by this, nor particularly convinced that the little thing she holds in her arms will someday be as big as her mother, sprawled long-limbed and sleepy across the straw. The girl sets a finger beneath one crooked paw of the pup in her lap, and raises it to watch it flop softly again.

“No,” she decides. “No, she is a little lady.” A pause, and Mischa’s eyes narrow. “And she will be fierce, too. A fright to the hares in the field.”

“A lady and a terror?” Alana repeats, with only thin amusement.

“Yes, I think so. It isn’t fair that we must be one or the other, is it, Rose?” She follows the puppy’s muzzle with her finger, down to her little wet nose, and watches Will press his puppy to his chest. “What will you name him?”

Will ducks his head to look at the little dog pawing at his chest and licking long against his coat, determined in his desire to lick right through. He laughs, just a single gentle note and shrugs.

"I have not yet considered. I am unused to naming them when usually within several weeks I see them on their way."

"That seems so inhumane," Mischa says, cradling her pup closer. Alana bends, careful to gather her skirt, to let the puppies sniff her hand.

"We would have a great many dogs were Will to keep them all," she says. "The estate would be overrun."

"I would hardly mind," Mischa says, and Will laughs again.

"Nor would the dogs, I think."

Mischa lifts Rose against her chest, cheek pressed to velvety fur as the pup roots against her neck. She watches Will in his tenderness, in his mirth. His laughter warms her, unexpectedly. He is kind and gentle. Still, perhaps, he seems more brother than suitor, but he makes it seem so easy to move past that minor inconvenience.

The fact that such a courtship would incense her parents only sweetens the thought of it all, and she laughs a little at the thought that they would be so bothered when Will is, in fact, entirely suitable.

“We will think on names,” she whispers to Will, almost conspiratorial, before a thought snares her. She almost sheds it, almost tells herself to be good and play fair, to be a lady rather than a terror.

Almost.

“My brother is due back next week,” she tells Will, affecting a careless distance in her tone, as if her elder brother does not matter a whit. Certainly his interests do not, in Will or in tidiness, nor does she have a particular mind for his _lack_ of interests, of which dogs is surely one. “Ought we save one for him?”

Will considers, and turns when he hears Alana behind him, making a gentle sound as she lifts a puppy that’s balancing on his back legs for attention, legs wriggling now in midair as she holds the little thing. Will swallows, turns back to Mischa.

Once, Hannibal had not feared dirt so much, happy as Will is now to get his hands messy in the mud digging sticks from the path, happy to collect pebbles and skip them on the lake. He wonders when he had become so prim that he would not even touch flowers as he passed them by, so proper that allowing a dog to lick his hand would lead to a grimace.

He wonders if that’s all a mask Hannibal has forgotten how to take off, if beneath it all is still a boy who had one so enjoyed playing doctor, uncaring if his hands were messy with blood or mud or both at once.

“By next week there will surely be one who hasn’t yet told us his name,” Will says at length, smiling at Mischa. “It would be good to have one with a name neither of us can pronounce.”

“I would like to visit them again before then,” she responds, always a demand upon her words, and yet so sweetly voiced as to seem less than.

“Whenever you like,” he says. “They are your fami-”

“With you,” interjects Mischa. There is a slyness in her eyes, certainly, a deviousness to their narrowing. That of a girl happy to get her dress dirty, to play with hounds that the more proper among them would sniff at as smelly creatures. That of a girl with designs upon designs, untamed by way of a life surrounded by those who would never tell her no.

She looks like her brother, in that moment and in that mood. She looks how he used to look, when he would steal away with Will to corners unexplored, across fields and forests and neatly-kept grounds that then seemed endless.

Will swallows and laughs, a little. “Of course.”

“Good,” Mischa grins, but it sounds more like gratitude than confirmation of her own command. Will smiles back and pushes himself to stand, he almost steps back into Alana and with endless murmured apologies wipes his hand to hold it out to her to help her up again, puppy set to the ground once more.

“I’m sorry,” he laughs, and immediately averts his eyes from her to the ground, to the puppies that are slowly making their way to their mother in sleepy stumbles to curl up for the night.

“I’m not so fragile that I will break from being stepped against,” Alana laughs, and Will’s blush grows warmer.

“Will you return?” he asks her, gesturing before rephrasing. “Will you return with Miss Mischa to see the puppies again?”

“Where Miss Mischa goes, so go I,” remarks Alana, only gently removing her hand from his before he releases it. She watches him a moment, and recalls Beverly’s words of caution, before adding, “It would be a pleasure, if you’ll have me.”

He breathes a laugh and pushes his curls back from his face. “Then that would be mine.”

Mischa only reluctantly relinquishes the newly wakened Rose from her arms, a little pout as she watches her girl lope clumsy to join her siblings. The look smooths like still water as Will offers her a hand in turn, and she squeezes gently as she stands. A moment passes, a decision is made, propriety be damned. Mischa raises a little onto her toes and wraps her arms around Will’s neck, just a brief squeeze.

“I hope you’ll help me train her? You will, won’t you? There is so much I might learn from you.”

Will’s hands splay at his sides, fingers wide as he wonders, frantically, where it would be proper to put them without seeming presumptuous or - truly - far worse things. So he doesn’t move at all, holding his breath before releasing it in a slow sigh and nodding his head.

“I will,” he says, relieved when Mischa steps back. “If you wish her to be your companion she will need to be trained for the home, not just to the grounds.”

“Good,” Mischa smiles. “Then we will spend a lot of time together getting her ready to be a proper lady in the home. I very much look forward to it.”

Will’s smile is genuine, and he inclines his head in a small bow to her before Mischa waltzes past to stand by Alana again, waiting to leave with her.

Will watches them go, presses his back against the divider and a hand against his eyes with a sigh. Too long since he has allowed himself to let his mind wander, thinking of things he has long ago stamped out to embers and ash. Too long and now too close, emotions related to people and places, times and distances.

He thinks, he finds, not of this visit but the promise of another, a week on, once Hannibal is back.

A knock on the little door jars him and he curses softly, moves to open it.

“You finished playing games, Graham?” Beverly grins, holding out a pitchfork as Will snorts and shakes his head. “Help a lady out.”

The puppies are settled, squirming softly against each other, against their mother who noses against them as if to ensure all are accounted for. He counts them himself, just in case, and allows a swell of sudden pleasure to flood his cheeks at the thought that Hannibal might appreciate them after all - little creatures with silky fur and unsteady limbs and sweet breath. It is hard to imagine that even Hannibal could wrinkle his nose at one, and Will wonders if he, too, would sit in the straw beside, without mind for smudging his breeches or scuffing his boots.

“Graham,” Beverly calls again, and he stirs himself from reverie, glad for the work that will quiet his mind from thoughts that break through well-tamped earth like seeds, long ago planted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks and love to our fabulous beta reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for her amazing attention to detail!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “May I seek you when I wish?” he asks, and Will’s little smile breaks suddenly wide, a puzzled grin.
> 
> “Of course.”
> 
> Fewer things please Hannibal more than being allowed to do as he wishes. Even less often is he so satisfied by knowing that he may do as he is now, a yielding that in Hannibal’s mind manifests as the give of late summer peaches, their skin snapping between his teeth to fill his throat with sweetness.
> 
> “Then you may seek me as you wish,” Hannibal responds, smiling softly. “Perhaps this evening.”

Will knows when Hannibal has returned to the estate not by his presence, but by the activity around it.

Backs straighten and steps quicken. A parcel of luggage is carried hurriedly inside from the fleet carriage that bounces lightly to a stop on the long pathway to the house. Horses are returned still slick and shining to the stables for washing and rest.

Will steps aside as the horses are brought past to the stable, suddenly all too aware of the dirt beneath his nails and the scrapes from warring with the roses that explode unbounded from their meager perimeters. He waits until it becomes strange for him to continue to do so, and reminds himself that after a half-day’s travel from the city, the Lecter heir surely has business to attend to - tea to take and sundry household decisions to oversee. A rest in the salon and perhaps a bath to remove the road-dust from his skin and return it to alabaster.

A thousand thoughts and a thousand duties.

A life to tend to well beyond a happenstance visit to the garden.

Still, Will makes his way towards the commotion, towards the action and colors around the front of the estate, head up and shoulders pulling straighter, like he belongs there, like coming into and out of the house is something he does every day.

Will hides his hands behind his back in a careful fold and backs against the wall to watch, for a while, to find the man he seeks amidst those that tend to him. Mischa is not here to greet her brother, perhaps in her rooms awaiting the gifts he inevitably brings every time he goes to London. Will knows that as indifferent as she will appear towards them, she treasures every one. Keeps the books and little bottles and ribbon and dresses, not so haughty a princess behind closed doors.

Will swallows as he sees Hannibal finally pass by, pulling gloves from his fingers and flexing them bare. Will watches, commits the motion to memory, before pushing himself to step forward, greet Hannibal with a call of his name, a smile.

"I hope the city gave you a welcome reprieve," he says, wondering why he didn't take the time to comb his hair more thoroughly, or choose a more fitting coat.

Hannibal’s smile flickers to life before he can dim it, drawing up the muscles beneath his eyes that are ringed dark with sleeplessness. His pleasure is no less genuine, however, despite how he deliberately tempers his steps into long strides, making his way slowly towards the groundskeeper.

“It is always a worthwhile trip,” he intones, “vast in experience and lacking in clean air. My coats will smell of soot or worse for days.”

He pockets his gloves and gives a wave to one of the attendants who waits with luggage on the steps to the house. The boy goes, hefting it up the stairs, and Hannibal lingers near to Will. Too near, perhaps, but who would tell him so? Hannibal draws in a breath seeking not the vaunted smogless air of the countryside, but Will instead. Fresh sap and the green cuttings of plants, earthy manure from treating the flower beds and something warmer beneath.

“I hope that the flowers have behaved themselves in my absence,” he murmurs, teasing.

Will laughs, a single pleased note and swallows, nodding. He does not pull Hannibal into a conversation of flowerbeds and tending them. He wouldn't care, and Will shall not bore him.

"You will find some fresh in your room," Will assures him, smiling. "The wildflowers are aromatic, they live for several days only but they certainly leave an impression." He swallows, bites his lip, releases it. He watches to see if Hannibal will walk and if he should walk with him. They do, slower steps, side by side.

"I do hope my sister has not taxed you in my absence," Hannibal says, a curious tilt to the words that sends a warm shiver down Will’s spine. He shakes his head.

"Far from it," he says. “She seems enamored of the pups, has claimed one as her own, for the household - if you allow it."

“I fear my allowance or lack thereof has little meaning if her mind is made.” The words are not unkind, nor displeased in tone. Hannibal is unsurprised that Mischa has availed herself of Will in Hannibal’s absence, but finds a discreet satisfaction in Will’s countenance when he speaks of her. Fond, but without the bloom in his cheeks that Hannibal so frequently imagined drawing from him while he was away.

The other boys with whom he shared his company were lovely things, lanky-limbed and effete, would-be social climbers with enough beauty that those who need not climb would entertain their efforts. And yet there is never affection there, rarely enough a stimulating intercourse of conversation, and often that of another variety. Even still, Hannibal’s thoughts wandered, his touches whether cruel or kind pressed to bare skin with imaginings of another guiding them.

He thought of Will often and scandalously. And it bodes well, Hannibal muses, that he came to meet him on his arrival, when for months before they glimpsed each other only in going about their day.

“I do not mind it,” Hannibal finally says, “if it pleases her. And you.”

"I think people do not take dogs into the home often enough," Will says, hands coming to the front as he gestures, pleased and enthusiastic with Hannibal's acceptance. "They bring a different energy into the space, a comfort and a warmth that -"

Will swallows, draws a hand through his hair and shakes his head, embarrassed by his joy. He feels Hannibal's smile more than sees it, that strange way he had even as a child of smiling without moving his lips at all.

"I'm sorry," he sighs, directing a smile to his once-companion. "I will help her train the dog to be worthy of the household. Help you with one of your choice, if... if you cared for one as well."

“Why?”

The question is abrupt enough that Will pauses, blinking wide. In an instant, he burns scarlet over the bridge of his nose, blushing so much that it’s almost uncomfortable. His stomach sinks like ice into a frozen lake that began to crack at first spring’s warmth, now made cold again. Hannibal stops a step later, fingers working absently to straighten his cufflinks, and he turns to regard Will with an arched brow.

“I -”

It’s all Will can manage, and the only possibility he can see to follow it up is to apologize and excuse himself. Of course Hannibal has no interest in the hounds. It’s rare enough that he takes them hunting, his displeasure evident when the creatures show even simple affections towards him. It is foolish, entirely foolish -

“Why are you sorry?” Hannibal clarifies, in dulcet tones that carry in them none of the strain that has Will unable to move from where he’s planted himself. “I enjoy hearing you speak. Your enthusiasm, for lack of a less medicinal descriptor, is contagious. Please,” he asks, eyes softly lit as dawn. “Tell me about them.”

Will blinks, eyes too wide, too beautiful for a moment before he swallows, ducks his head again, nods. That, at least, has not changed. Hannibal's patience for listening to Will in all his whims, regarding the creatures in the forest, by the lake, those in his imagination that he would describe with such enthusiasm and pleasure, as though they were just as real.

"They are all different," Will says, regaining his footing somewhat, still averting his eyes from Hannibal, from the dark eyes that watch him so closely. "Some pups so calm, others filled with such energy I can barely run from them during the day. Like little people, all of them, individual and fascinating to watch grow. And they are, Hannibal, daily."

He takes a breath and holds it, teeth gentle against his lip before he laughs.

"Perhaps when you have the time -"

Hannibal watches Will openly, registering the man’s discomfort at being so scrutinized but unable to stop himself from it. Dark eyes trace along his wide jaw, across the hollows of his cheeks. They come to rest where he again works his lip between his teeth, broad white and pushing the pretty pink skin out of place. It looks soft as freshly unfurled petals, blooming pale where he bites to a richer red. There is beside his mouth a shadow of soil, no doubt wiped there during his work, and the extraordinary loveliness of a countenance so natural and fair and entirely guileless is too much for Hannibal to bear.

He reaches, allowing Will his startlement, and with fine-boned fingers barely brushing, Hannibal sweeps away the smudge with his thumb. Will’s skin is sun-warmed and soft as silk, in spite of his being outside so constantly. It feels nearly like a defilement for Hannibal to let his fingers linger there, but only nearly, and - Hannibal reasons - once such a corruption has taken place, it can hardly be undone.

“I have nothing but time,” Hannibal murmurs, eyes crinkling a little. He leaves _for you_ unspoken, and finally slips his fingers reluctantly free from where they rested for no more than a handful of heartbeats. “It is your work that you tend to so diligently for so many hours of the day. I am available,” he adds, turning to continue his walk towards the house, “whenever you wish to call on me.”

Will makes a sound, a small barely-voiced thing, and forces himself to breathe. He doesn’t stumble when he follows Hannibal again, sets his hands behind his back again, and tries not to lower his eyes to the ground again as they walk together.

"Perhaps this evening," Will says, careful to keep his smile tempered, careful to clasp his hands harder together when he feels the tug, the urge, to touch his face where Hannibal had, how Hannibal had. "So you have time to rest from your journey."

He doesn’t add how strange and welcome and entirely too good it is to have this time with him again, to have the freedom to come to him and speak, like they haven't for so long. He considers asking more, suggesting something else, but just smiles at the Lecter heir instead.

"May I come up then, or would you seek me yourself?"

Hannibal stops again, atop the stairs, watching for a moment as the chaise is jostled back down the long drive towards the carriage house. Its clattering grows quiet, and for a rare moment, they are alone. Will’s eyes have not dimmed since Hannibal touched him, as aware of Hannibal’s minute movements as Hannibal is of his, and they dart towards Hannibal’s hand when he brushes his thumb across his own fingertips, as if to ensnare within them the sensation of Will’s cheek.

“May I seek you when I wish?” he asks, and Will’s little smile breaks suddenly wide, a puzzled grin.

“Of course.”

Fewer things please Hannibal more than being allowed to do as he wishes. Even less often is he so satisfied by knowing that he may do as he is now, a yielding that in Hannibal’s mind manifests as the give of late summer peaches, their skin snapping between his teeth to fill his throat with sweetness.

“Then you may seek me as you wish,” Hannibal responds, smiling softly. “Perhaps this evening.”

Will’s smile narrows his eyes and he licks his lips. “Alright.”

Will does not thank him, does not ask for any more permission or question his luck. Perhaps, he thinks, he has not been alone in his missing of Hannibal, perhaps he has not been the only one longing for his friend and the warmth they shared together.

Again he brings a hand to his chest, again his bow to Hannibal is lower than even his station requires, and he takes his time to stand straighter, to bring his hands back behind his back again and hold his blush in check.

Will leaves Hannibal on the stairs and returns to the grounds. Only then, beyond the parlor, beyond the pebbled front drive, does Will bring his hand up to rub gently over his lips, over the speck on his cheek Hannibal had soothed away. He turns his face into the touch and with a quiet laugh, a gentle curse, goes about his way again, till evening.

\---

The house is quiet in the evenings, just the soft sounds of the birds falling to evening song outside, the gentle tones of Mischa’s practicing the harpsichord in the music room. Supper has been taken, and everyone has retired, to the reading room or sitting rooms, to their chambers for rest.

Will cradles the little dog he’s chosen against his chest, soothing behind his ears as the pup nuzzles beneath his arm. The dog is the smallest of the litter, not the runt but just as gentle as one, a quiet thing that rarely yips, that contents itself by resting beside Will’s leg when he kneels amongst the wriggling creatures.

He is quiet and controlled, with beautiful markings down his back like a ridge, darker than the rest of him. He is the only one that Will had considered, at all, for Hannibal, and the only dog so far unnamed in the litter.

“Will!”

Alana’s voice rings lightly from the hallway, outside Mischa’s lesson. She pivots on her heel to wander towards him, and Will watches as the stablemistress vanishes the other direction.

“Miss Bloom,” smiles Will. “How are you?”

She dips in the vague motion of a curtsey, quick and almost playful. Her lips are rosy, flushed as her cheeks, but she puts herself together neatly and folds her hands in front of her. “Very well, thank you. Hello to you,” she says to the puppy, more than happy to sniff at her and huff a quiet little sound. “I do hope Miss Mischa hasn’t laid her claim to this one as well.”

“No,” Will answers, a laugh breezing soft through his voice. “No, I’m afraid this little lad is off to meet her brother.”

“Hannibal?” Alana blinks, and Will mirrors her surprise.

“There isn’t another, as far as I know.”

Clearing her throat, Alana considers her words, and those of the woman who was once again whispering against her ear. A shiver tickles through her limbs. “Just the one,” she finally agrees. “But I’ve never known him to be fond of them.”

Will presses his lips together, agreement without agreement, but something in his eyes warms in a way that almost narrows Alana’s. The little pup wags his tail, recognizing the voice, the smell of the woman who has been by before, seeking with little nose and heavy feet with splayed toes. Will turns him to Alana and she sets a hand gently on the puppy’s head.

“I thought I may introduce him to one. Perhaps he would take a liking, train him to be a companion as Mischa wishes for Rose to be.”

“You will fill the house with dogs, Will,” Alana laughs, and Will laughs as well, ducking his head before stepping closer, enough to whisper between them, not enough to infringe on Alana’s space.

“You are welcome to the girl that took a liking to you,” he says. “Then the home will certainly grow full with living creatures, following you and Mischa and her brother along. I know Beverly has her eye on the oldest, says he will make a wonderful herding dog, though I worry what she intends to herd.”

Alana’s smile grows a little, and she dips her head in kind, a shared conspiracy and only a softly squirming creature to overhear them. “One might suspect that there is a great deal in common between her flock and our own.”

“All the more reason you might need assistance in that,” Will suggests, lifting the little pup meaningfully.

Alana laughs again and runs a careful hand over the puppy’s head, allowing his tongue to flick affectionate against her wrist. “I will consider it,” she allows, pleasant, always, but not without a sharpness in her gaze, quick and curious. “I hope you will not take offense, though, when I question your ulterior motives.”

“Ulterior -” Will can’t finish the words, eyes flaring wide. “Miss Bloom, I assure you, I seek only to make introduction, per Hannibal - per Master Lecter’s request -”

“And to fill the house with dogs,” Alana reminds him, scarcely able to constrain her own amusement - however alarming the grander view of the situation at hand. He blinks, ducks his head and blushes, and finally sighs a laugh, as if defeated.

“So I go then, to see this through to its nefarious end.”

“So you do,” she agrees. “So you do.”

Will gathers the dog closer and makes his way through the house. He knows well where Hannibal’s chambers are, but still he slows his steps when he approaches, polite, demure, quiet. He takes only a moment more before knocking, but finds no answer to his call. Frowning, he tries again, a firmer knock, and two more than before, but still just silence answers him.

Will feels his cheeks color, the cold descent of humiliation against his skin as the puppy wriggles in his arms and sets heavy paws against his chest before licking beneath his chin in playful puppyish reassurance.

Who did he think himself, truly, to be able to seek out the future head of the Lecter household at his will and whim? He is no one, in that regard, no one at all.

Will swallows once, again, and steps back from the door to make his way quietly down the large wide stairs again. He does not take the front door, does not want to draw attention to himself there as well, so he goes towards the back, through the corridor and past room after room for entertaining and eating and sitting and drawing. And it is by that last, that Will’s steps slow and he retreats back just a few to look within.

Hannibal sits at the immense table there, back arched in a beautiful bend, concentrating on something before him, hand moving quickly over the page as though in a sketch or speedily written letter. Will watches, mesmerized, and considers just continuing on his way, when the pup in his hands lets out a sharp and delighted yelp.

Over his desk, Hannibal’s hands still. He does not yet raise his eyes but gives himself time to demure the smile that appears, immediately.

“Hello, Will.”

A sigh, tension and relief all at once, as Will cups his hand gently over the puppy’s muzzle and receives an eager nuzzling in response.

“My apologies,” Will calls back softly. “I did not mean to disturb. I can come back -”

“Or you might stay,” Hannibal answers, and with easy movements that little betray the swiftness of them, he shuffles several pages together and stands. A stretch works its way upwards, from long legs in tight breeches, beneath the waistcoat he still wears despite having shed his tailcoat earlier in the evening. Underdressed, certainly, but Hannibal pays it little mind as he turns towards Will, and watches the uneasy steps the man takes further into the spacious parlor.

“And a guest,” adds Hannibal. “I would ask for introduction but with no name to give, it would be a fruitless endeavor.”

Will lifts the puppy a little higher, turning his head to look at the little thing as much as present him to his potential new owner.

“A guest you will have to introduce to me, I think,” Will corrects gently. He does not yet hold the dog out for Hannibal to take, wanting to see if the man will offer to do so himself. He tries, instead, not to notice the relative state of undress, the way he is - in a rare moment - relaxed in his attire and his carriage.

Will brings a hand to his own hair to resist pushing the stray lock of Hannibal’s from his forehead.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt you,” Will continues. “I sought for you in your chambers, thought perhaps I’d come too late and you had retired for the night -”

“I’m glad you carried on,” answers Hannibal, interrupting only gently. He wonders what has caused Will to become so apologetic - the barriers of class, perhaps, naturally formed and accepted by each, that which they were born into. He has tried, deliberately, to seem less imposing for the man, peeling away stiff black layers of clothing and loosening his hair from its usual sleekness. Almost casual, and still -

“May I?” he asks Will, near enough now to survey the little animal in the man’s arms just as keenly as he surveys the man himself. Dark curls, endlessly untamed, like roots coiling across the pitch black earth, and eyes of cloudless sky, wide and serene.

Carefully, Hannibal extends a hand to stroke over the puppy’s head. Elegant fingers trained in medicine and music, cooking and craft, slip behind one floppy ear to scratch. He blinks, once, but his expression shows no less pleasure when the puppy nuzzles a wet nose against his palm.

“Is this a lady, or a gentleman?” Hannibal asks, eyes alighting to meet Will’s and seek into those endless skies. “Gentlehound, perhaps.”

Will laughs, turns to the little dog so he doesn’t feel himself drowning too far into the dark eyes that so deliberately meet his own.

“Truly he is a gentlehound,” he comments. “He is the quietest and most well-behaved of his litter. The one more content to enjoy the comfort of a warm hand behind his ears than the thrill of chasing a stick across the kennels.”

Will looks at Hannibal again, manages to lift his eyes to the man’s lips before faltering, not wanting to seek further, and biting his own.

“I thought him most suitable.”

“You sought to match him to my temperament,” Hannibal clarifies, if only to see Will blush at the words. He does, a little, but also draws a deep breath.

“Much as I can make of it now, yes.”

Hannibal tilts his head. He appreciates the honesty, and the further truth that lies upon it in a glimmer of bitterness, like oil slicking across the surface of water. Extending his arms, Will takes another breath, audible, much smaller but somehow louder all at once before he recognizes the movement for what it is, and allows Hannibal to take the puppy from him.

He cradles the little thing, squirming to settle in his arms. Were it Will in his arms, he would know exactly what to do. Were it anyone, really, the movements would come practiced and natural to turn them chest to back and run hot hands over their clothing, whispering blasphemous promises in their ear. But this is an unfamiliar thing, and Hannibal returns his thoughts to the little dog lying placid against him, smile curving wider than he would ever allow it to without intent.

“I am at a loss, admittedly, of what to do.”

Will blinks, shakes his head as the words sink in and smiles, stepping just a little closer. His hands hover just over Hannibal’s, fingers splayed and curling a little until he sets them against him, forcing his mind to slow, his heart to settle. They had held hands many times, as children, he had laughed trying to read Hannibal’s palm, the other had wrapped Will’s when he had cut himself on a sharp branch.

Time and again they had clasped fingers and rubbed palms and now, Will feels his entire body alight with even the thought that he is doing so again.

He guides Hannibal’s hand to curl beneath the puppy’s backside, supporting him as little feet settle to Hannibal’s chest.

“This will balance him,” Will explains. “If you hold him here, no matter how you support him otherwise, he will not fall, nor fear that you will drop him.”

Hannibal listens. He adjusts. He cradles the puppy with one arm beneath and the other set against his back, and recalls with absent amusement that he has never touched one of the hounds for longer than this. Nor, until now, has he seen reason to, and he finds himself warming at the thought of it, at least until a cold nose presses against his chin, and a warm tongue follows it.

He only scarcely restrains a sound of dismay, blinking wide. It seems distinctly profane that his hands are still sore from spanking scarlet the backsides of lovely boys who, to him nameless and faceless both, each thought themselves privileged to be bruised by him, and to find himself now instead cradling a little creature who treats him with a remarkably similar affection.

This, however, is welcome, and - Hannibal would admit - returned.

Still, he lifts his chin away a little, unable to give himself entirely over just yet to this, and squints good-naturedly at the dog in his arms. “Laelaps,” Hannibal murmurs, and he is content to take the soft whine in response as agreement. “I know, she was a lady-hound, rather than -”

Though he is loathe to interrupt, Will can’t help himself. A fluttering in his chest like great wings fills him with breath that fuels his words, a moment that feels like all those they once shared when their time together seemed so endless. “What does it mean?”

“She was the dog given to Zeus who would always catch her prey,” Hannibal answers. “And easier to pronounce than Peitharchia, though ‘obedience’ is what we will endeavor to embody even still.”

Will repeats the name, mouth careful in forming the foreign word, and smiles, that same bright smile he would shine at Hannibal when they discovered something together, or learned something new as children.

The puppy shifts, levering himself up on his back legs to reach for Hannibal’s face again, to make his affection known now that he can feel the steady heart beat beneath his own, that he can feel strong hands supporting him and gently stroking, even if Hannibal does not realize his fingers move that way. Will steps closer, just enough to catch the little thing under his front legs and lower him down again so Hannibal isn’t taxed.

“He’ll learn,” Will laughs, breathless and soft. “He will not jump or lick like this when he is older, unless you let him, but when he’s small -”

Will raises his eyes and realizes just how close they’re standing, with the motion that brought him up to Hannibal this way. He has to blink to return him to focus, take a quick breath when Hannibal exhales and Will feels the shift of air, right there against his lips.

The years apart seem to slip away - endless days of asking his father when Hannibal would be able to play again, seeking glimpses of him through the windows of the house. And slowly less, only several times a day, and then perhaps only a glance, and then days would pass and weeks. A forced exile, reinforced by his father’s gentle reminders that he’d feel better in time.

Time passed, but his father spoke incorrectly, and Will’s thoughts returned always to this. Hands pressed together. Toppling onto each other in the garden. Little touches that for Will were the source of all the sun that lit the world bright for them, shared secrets beneath blankets draped as tents in the yard where they would lay beside each other.

He wondered, often, as they grew separated by barriers far greater than the walls between house and garden, how it might feel to lay beside Hannibal as they became, rather than as children. As Hannibal grew tall and sleek and Will strong and swift, countless nights have been spent in thought of what, now, their hands would feel like pressed palm to palm, with fingers entwined.

Will swallows, and Hannibal watches the motion with hooded eyes. He lifts his hand from the puppy’s back and with no more pressure than that of a feather, sweeps his fingers through the stray curl that returned to Will’s brow, to tuck it among the others.

The sound Will makes is entirely involuntary, a weak little thing that heaves his chest and brings his lip between his teeth again. And for a moment, for just one moment, Will’s back arches and his head tilts back with the touch against him, and brings him close, so close…

As they had been, once, when they had rolled down a hill to feel the world move around them when they stood. They had collided together on the way down and ended up in a heap in the grass, giggling and squirming together. Will had laid his head against Hannibal’s chest, then, laughing that he was so dizzy he couldn’t see, and Hannibal had promised to ground him, had drawn a hand through his hair just as he had now.

And then the world comes back and Will’s breathing comes short and he steps back, eyes wide and cheeks beautifully pink, and he swallows before turning his eyes away and shaking his head with another nervous little laugh, hand up to rub his lips over and over as though erasing a memory or a phantom touch.

Hannibal curses himself that he didn’t kiss him.

“Will -”

He lifts his hand from his lips, an apology unvoiced but given nonetheless. Nothing happened, Will reminds himself, just old memories come unburied, too close to the surface where he tried to inter them. Nothing happened, he tells himself again, and it hurts worse the second time he thinks it.

“Will,” Hannibal murmurs again, watching the sudden discomfort, guilty consternation, and the warmth that had spread out the gaps between his ribs and sunk against his skin is gone, but for where the puppy is still pressed against him. “Will, you -”

“Yes, I will,” comes the answer. “I’ll - I’ll take him back with me, to the others, he’s not big enough yet to be away from his mother. But he’s yours to see whenever you like.”

“Will.”

The younger man steps forward to gather the little dog to him, freeing Hannibal of having to hold his weight, and finds his wrist gently grasped by him instead. Will freezes, not in fear but in worry that he has fallen so deep into his mind’s fantasies that he will not clamber free of them.

He watches Hannibal as he runs a thumb gently over and over Will’s pulse, to settle it, he supposes. He wonders what Hannibal thinks when he finds that it speeds up instead. Will’s hand curls into a gentle fist and he swallows, eyes still up, still so close, as the little creature nuzzles against him, now, instead.

“I should take my leave,” he says softly, but he is reluctant, regretful for even suggesting such a thing. Hannibal draws his hand up a little higher, just enough to slip beneath Will’s unresisting fingers, feel them curl tighter over his thumb as though to support, for comfort.

And then Will smiles, that tiny genuine thing that has Hannibal’s own pulse shudder.

“Remember, you may seek me as you wish,” Hannibal reminds him, and watches Will’s smile widen just a degree, enough to brighten his eyes to something extraordinary.

“I remember,” Will sighs, squeezes just once more against him before extricating his hand and himself from the man before him, resisting with every ounce of willpower he has from leaning just close enough to rest his forehead to his shoulder. He steps backwards until he is at the door, like a loyal subject leaving royal chambers, waiting for permission to turn.

And then he does, head down and smile wider still, and he goes along his way, to the back door as he had sought to, leaving Hannibal alone to press his thumb to his lips, and spread his palm against his face, and imagine that it is Will’s hand against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks and love to our fabulous beta reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for her amazing attention to detail and swift reading skills! You are the best!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will thinks there must be something in the air that’s driven them all to madness - that same something that spurs the garden to wild growth in late summer, as if the plants know in their roots that winter will soon be upon them. That same something that drives rabbits to box each other on the lawn and fills the air with so much birdsong that it becomes a sort of extraordinary calamity.
> 
> Mischa with her knowing little laughs. Alana with her heart spilling forth into the morning sun. Beverly with wry remarks that make no sense at all.
> 
> Hannibal.

It is a whim, truly.

It is far too early in the morning to call on anyone when Alana finds herself wrapping a shawl around her shoulders and making her way quietly from the estate house and over the immaculate lawns to the stables and kennels.

It is barely light yet, and a cool fog lingers over the grass above the dew. Her shoes darken with it but she pays it no mind, walking quietly and with straight shoulders. Too early and early enough, she supposes, to gather courage and expel the words that have been stifling her for days, now. More and more, as she thinks of the blue-black hair and dark narrowed eyes and that smile, enough to just barely show the sharp points of her incisors when she grins.

No.

She must tell her and allow herself breath. Surely, Beverly would have the sense and kindness to not use those words to destroy her.

The stables are quiet when she nears them, horses snorting and quietly shifting their weight, but no sound of sweeping or brushing, no whispered words or hummed melody as Beverly works.

She is not here. And perhaps, that’s for the best. Alana allows herself into the stables and closes the door behind herself.

She has always been a good judge of character, astute and quick to judge, but in so many instances finding her instincts validated. Setting her back against the closed stable door, she gathers her wrap a little tighter, and watches her breath plume into the air.

“I need to tell you something,” she begins, speaking to the morning dew and violet dawn. “And I would have you hear me speak, entirely, before you share your thoughts.”

Alana hopes, for a moment, that Beverly shows surprise at the strength of her words, and she lifts a hand to press the backs of her fingers to her cheek, to cool the spreading warmth there.

“For all the time we’ve spent together - late nights tending to the Lecters, early mornings before they’ve even woken, passing through house and garden and stable, I have felt,” she draws a breath, and sighs, “a pull. Towards you, just here in my belly. Up into my chest. At first I thought I was unwell, in truth. Physically, then perhaps simply overcome by a sort of strange hysteria, that made me so nervous to be near you.”

Lowering her hand from her chest, Alana repeats the last few words beneath her breath, and shakes her head. “I feel drawn to you, in the way that poets describe with far prettier words than I have. And those moments we’ve shared, in hallways and secret corners - more than mere acquaintance. It is not illness, nor hysteria. You are - no, I want you - _yes_ ,” she decides. “You are my most cherished friend and I want you to be - more _than_...”

A pause, a press of her teeth against her lip, and Alana laughs. At the strangeness and openness of it all, having the words free in the cool air, watching them disappear as they dissipate.

“I want to be more than,” she repeats, and nods. That is what she’ll say. That is how. She wonders if she should say more, describe the sensations, attempt to explain them. She wonders what Beverly will say, if she will make it into a jest, if she will consider the words and reply more eloquently than Alana can manage, with her heart stuttering as it is.

In her mind, she sees Beverly smile, tilt her head, duck her eyes as she so rarely does, and takes a step forward from the door she leans against now, as though to step closer to her friend in her imagination.

“I -”

Alana startles, hand to her chest and eyes wide, when the door opens between the stable and the kennels. Had she been here? Had she heard? Alana’s lips seek to find words, an apology, an explanation, and she manages only a small sound when it is Will who steps through the door, holding the puppies back with a gentle foot before turning to Alana.

“Good morning,” he sighs, speaking as quietly as she had been, as though to keep the mood between them. His cheeks are pink, eyes bright and hair messy only in a way that suggests he had run his hand through it.

“Good morning,” answers Alana. “You startled me.”

She lifts her chin and hopes her shawl is thick enough to hide the wild fluttering of her heart. In her mind, she works backward over every practiced word and declaration, breath stymied - did she say her name? Did she call to Beverly before she began to speak? Her throat clicks as she swallows.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Will says, and Alana shakes her head.

“No. You haven’t.”

“I waited,” he clarifies, looking just past her, rather than meeting her widened eyes. “Until you were done. You said -”

“I said -”

“For me to listen, and not to interrupt until you were through.”

“For you to - oh.” Alana’s eyes widen, her lips slacken and she blinks at Will a moment before pressing her fingers to her lips. “Oh, Will, I -”

“It’s strange how feelings grow when you don’t speak of them,” Will says, laughing quietly before ducking his head. He does not step closer, yet, hands held behind his back as a gentleman would, and Alana cannot argue, even in her shock, that Will is an exceptional gentleman. Polite, soft-spoken and respectful, hard working and clever. Well-presented and shy. And entirely not the person she had aimed her words at.

“Like the flowers in the garden. Seeds planted in a different season and then… blooming in such beautiful, sometimes entirely surprising ways.”

Alana laughs, and she means it only to be a little thing, birdlike and brief, but it’s loud, strange, and she quiets it with as warm a smile as she can muster. “Yes, but,” she manages, stepping a little closer, hands raised but not reaching. “But flowers are also _unsurprising_ , are they not? One knows, before the shoots have pierced the soil, what was planted there long before -”

“If one is the one who planted them,” Will says, brows knitting a little as he untangles her words.

“Ah! Then,” exclaims Alana, “then if one is _not_ the one who planted them, then one does not know what will arise once spring has come.”

Will tilts his head, stepping forward just once, as if by doing so he might hear her more clearly. “One plants the seeds that grow and knows from whence the seeds one planted came, but no - yes? No,” he decides, “no, if one is not one who planted them, then they would be unknown to one. To - to the one who did?”

“Who did not,” Alana corrects.

“To the one who did not plant them,” Will finishes in a rush. His curls spill from the quick shake of his head and he lifts a hand to push them back, completing his step closer to Alana. “Miss Bloom -”

“Will Graham,” she chimes, a little too high, still a little too damnably loud.

“Has spring then sprung, that the flowers are to be seen?” he swallows. “By _us_?”

“It’s - it’s nearly autumn,” she answers. “Of course spring has - wait. No. Perhaps, Will,” she sighs, exasperated, one hand clutching her shawl, the other in her skirts. “Mister Graham, the words that I spoke this morning -”

Will just watches her, concerned, confused, before her tone makes sense to him. Her quiet apology and lack of encouragement - the softness and gentleness of her words long seeped through the cool air. They did not belong to him.

He sighs, a quick huff of a laugh and retreats the step he had taken, returning his hands behind his back.

“I misunderstood, and in my ignorance misspoke,” he apologizes.

“Will.”

“Please accept my humble apology for the interruption,” Will offers, bowing a little lower, hair over his face, before he stands again, eyes down to the ground between them. “I hope your words find the ears of the one they belong to, Miss Bloom.”

A brief flicker of light eyes to hers and Will turns to go, careful, once more, to keep the puppies from running havoc in the stable. But before the door has closed entirely, Will grasps the frame and leans out once more, catching Alana’s attention with a quiet word.

“Spring still comes,” he confirms, quiet, gentle, hurt still pulsing through him but of another sort. “Every year, regardless if those that wait for the flowers are not those that tend them.”

Alana blinks, considers, and nods, enough for Will to understand, enough for him to nod back and close the inner door quietly behind himself. Alana waits a moment more before hurrying to the stable door she had come in through, careful with the catch as she closes it behind herself again. Briskly, she makes her way towards the house once more, uncaring to look behind her, as Beverly Katz steps after her, changes her mind and instead enters the stables in silence, on her own.

\---

Will pushes himself into his chores, working in the gardens beyond the lake, those he tends weekly, rotating between each elaborate bed to give all the plants their due attention. He does not think about the morning’s conversation, the humiliation of the misunderstanding. He does not think of the meaning behind the words, though they had not been aimed at him.

He wonders if it is always so, those that plant the seed always knowledgeable and those that watch it grow, surprised. He wonders if that is the way of the world, if that is his lot in life. If the irony of his entire existence is that he was meant to not be the gardener, but the one seeing it bloom, instead.

He works himself to exhaustion by dusk, pleased with the amount of work he had managed, but still trembling in uncertainty and worry. He does not seek out Alana again to speak with her, offer endless apologies more. He does not seek out Beverly to tell her of the morning. Iit is not his place to say, not his words to tell her. He bathes in the little house he lives in, out by the lake, and dresses himself once more.

He thinks how foolish he is, that he does not simply climb into bed to rest. He thinks how foolish he is that he puts on his best coat and makes sure to shine his shoes. He thinks of every touch and every request, every lingering word between himself and the man he has not been close to since they were children. He thinks and he wonders which of them had planted the seed, then, to watch it bloom now.

It must be something in the air that’s driven them all to madness - that same something that spurs the garden to wild growth in late summer, as if the plants know in their roots that winter will soon be upon them. That same something that drives rabbits to box each other on the lawn and fills the air with so much birdsong that it becomes a sort of extraordinary calamity.

Mischa with her knowing little laughs.

Alana with her heart spilling forth into the morning sun.

Beverly with wry remarks that make no sense at all.

Hannibal.

And now Will himself, as subject to whatever witchcraft has worked the house into such a frenzy, off across the grounds towards the house. Nevermind that it’s past supper. Nevermind that his body aches from work and fear both. His feet carry him as if possessed, trapped in some fairy ring - constructed only for him - in which he will exhaust himself. Or humiliate himself.

Or lose a friend, for good, and not only for a time.

Will takes the stairs quietly, bouncing on the balls of his feet so his heels do not click against the floor. He walks silently through the hallway, glad to not meet Alana again, here, as he makes his way towards Hannibal’s chambers. For a moment he merely stands, he does not knock. He thinks how he should have brought flowers again, more roses for Hannibal’s room, how he should have gathered some wildflowers he had so meticulously settled to their beds today. He thinks and considers and steps forward to knock before he can change his mind.

He hears the quiet creaking of the floorboards as Hannibal sets his feet against them, and swallows thickly, closing his eyes to wait. Will opens them immediately as the door opens, allows a smile to greet Hannibal. He has already dressed down for bed, no jacket, sleeves loose against his wrists and hair soft over his forehead. He blinks at Will, surprised at seeing him so late, and - truly - uninvited, and Will, for all his fervor and confidence, does little more than take a breath and hold it.

A moment between them of silence, before Hannibal steps aside to allow Will within, and he releases his sigh quickly as he goes.

“I’m sorry,” Will murmurs, as the door closes, “I am so sorry to barge in. But you once told me to seek you out when I needed you… if I needed you. And I -”

“You’ve neither barged, nor have reason to be sorry,” Hannibal intones, his voice as warm as his words are cool. His eyes brighten with interest, though the rest of his expression remains entirely placid, as he takes in the fine jacket and shined shoes, the wild vines of hair curling against flushed cheeks. “Please, sit if you like.”

He motions to the couch, long grey velvet like a cigarette left to burn too long, but Will doesn’t sit. He folds his hands nervously together, then splays them against his hips, pushing downward onto his legs, and then folding his fingers together once more. Hannibal stops, watching the display, and returns to stand nearer the man who lingers fretting near the door.

“A drink, perhaps? You’ve not disturbed me, Will, I was only reading.”

Another step closer, and then another, but he does not reach, and Will is glad for it as he ducks his head. Hannibal’s heart skips faster and he quiets it, the tension in the air between them like the humid crackle before a thunderstorm, no lightning yet but certainly the threat of it, raising the hairs up the back of his neck.

Hannibal dares not give words to what he hopes is the reason for the visit, nor does he give credence to the creeping concern that this is his sister’s doing. He only reminds himself that it is his duty, innate and trained both, to remain calm, no more troubled than water after the swans have moved through it. 

“What do you need?” Hannibal asks, softly. “Speak.”

Will laughs, then, helpless and quiet, as Alana had that morning, after he had inquired after her words, as well. They are so similar, she and he, he thinks, and it straightens his shoulders a little more, allows him to lift his chin.

“We were close, as children,” Will says, shaking his head, trying again. “You were my closest companion, my dearest friend. I loved you then.”

The words fall heavy between them and Will takes another breath, lifting his head higher, pressing confidence where he feels none, from reserves he has built for many years.

“The days you did not come, I waited. By the lake, with pebbles I had gathered the night before, careful to make sure they were smooth for us to skip them. With sticks I had found in the small wood, meticulously cleaning them of bark so we could fight with them as swords held aloft on our ship in the trees.” Will swallows, thick, parts his lips and lifts his eyes to Hannibal properly.

“My heart ached when you stopped coming to play. When you grew older and cleverer and poised, and I remained with grass stains on my knees and twigs in my hair and silly childish dreams of holding your hand again.”

Will sets his own behind his back again, now, to stop them shaking. He takes a step closer to Hannibal, who does not show disgust nor shame at hearing the words, but genuine surprise, a strange sort of finality in his look that Will feels like ice in his stomach, a terror he melts through by speaking, still speaking.

“I thought I would forget. That we would grow as we were and I would be content, but I was not. I couldn’t be. The more I see you now, the less I can lie and - I could never lie to you anyway, you always knew, you always -” Will presses his lips together and smiles, cheeks pink with this, eyes bright. “It was like seeds planted in winter by foolish boys who thought they would grow in the snow. And now coming to bloom in their new spring, forgotten, yet somehow not. Both of us knowing they were there, both… waiting for spring.”

Hannibal draws a breath, but it does not come. His throat has worked itself into an agonized knot, his jaw aching too much for him to move it.

Will speaks poetry, in every hesitation and repetition, of his confession. It is more than Hannibal hoped for, more than he had ever anticipated, as children, as youths, as adults, now, standing in the stark silence where Will’s words fade. He recalls with enough force that he has to inhale how often they had held hands, fingers twined, whether laying in the grass to watch the clouds move or seeking through the woods. His body does not respond to the insistence that he reach, now, to grasp Will’s hand in his own again and still its trembling.

“Will,” he sighs, as the pain that tightens jaw and throat spreads into his chest. “I did not -”

“No,” Will responds, too suddenly, far too suddenly and Hannibal steps towards him, as Will steps once back. “No, I know you didn’t, you had - have - a great many things to do, and - little enough time for all that, let alone playing pretend.”

“Please,” Hannibal implores. Rib by rib his chest cracks apart. Step by step backwards Will is lost to him.

“I only wanted you to know,” Will says, and as suddenly as he appeared, he goes.

The last thing Hannibal sees is how his eyes soften in the corners, and his lips fall slack. The flowers that he brought to bear, in the petals rosy in his cheeks and the sweetness of his words, wilt before Hannibal’s eyes. As he watches Will’s back disappear down the hall, as he listens to his feet fall fast against the stairs, he wonders if he has ever seen anything so beautiful.

The silence Will leaves behind is stark, ringing, like the striking of a crystal glass with a silver knife and just as fragile. Hannibal listens for the closing of the front door, and closes his eyes as he releases a breath. Years he had missed the friendship as well, the closeness and softness of his friend, his smile, his quick mind and energy, the way he would rarely lead but so confidently follow. And now Will had led, stepped up to voice feelings strong enough for them to overflow past parted lips and over pink cheeks.

Hannibal takes up a coat, the first he can reach, and follows Will quickly down the stairs and out the door.

The grounds are quiet, humming only with the voices of evening crickets, and fireflies that float above the lake like ghostly candles. Hannibal pays none of it any mind. He walks with purpose towards the little lake house Will lives in. He walks with Will’s gentle admissions in his ears, his softness in his mind. He walks so he can tell Will, show him, that he has not been alone in his longing.

The door is closed fast and Hannibal knocks briskly, almost desperately until he hears the lock turn. Will’s eyes are bright when he looks up, surprised, almost liquid.

"Hannibal -" His voice wavers, smile apologetic that he had gotten the man out of his chambers, out of bed. "Please, I -"

Hannibal kisses his apology away.

His Will. His faithful friend. The only part of Hannibal's childhood that he's not been able to purge into distant memory with sin. This kind and gentle boy, mischievous and clever, beautiful and strong, who lifts trembling fingers to Hannibal's hands and tries to remove them before he can feel the spilling tears down his cheeks.

It’s quick and clumsy, several times nearly missing the other's mouth entirely. He catches Will's cheeks in his hands, through tears and blushing warmth - he spreads his fingers back into his hair and grasps. Gasping, Will's eyes widen until their lips close again, and he’s made to take a step back from the force of it.

Their bodies fit together, hips nestled into hips, breaths bringing their ribs to meet. As they once laid after toppling down a hill together, with Will snorting laughter atop. As Hannibal once pinned him wrestling through the grass. He chuckles, suddenly, between their mouths, and wonders if it was always so obvious as it seems now, or if Will simply saw it years before Hannibal could recognize that -

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers, as Will blinks wide-eyed confusion up at him. “I didn’t know, Will, for so long - I - I’m sorry,” Hannibal says. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to skip rocks with you. I wish I could have been.”

Will laughs, bright and helpless, and sinks against Hannibal when he kisses him again. His smile grows, enough that it's harder for them to kiss, but they try anyway, with fumbling fingers and shuddered breaths. Will’s fingers curl tighter in Hannibal’s shirt, in his hair, tugging him closer to wrap his arms up over his shoulders, push up on his toes to reach.

He thinks of their promises, whispered over the wet mud where they wrote in their imaginary language - to always be friends, to grow into adventurers together. He thinks of the years spent in longing, with just a wave of greeting some days, nothing at all on others. He thinks of tending the flowers in hopes Hannibal would notice them, planting cream colored roses because Hannibal once commented that they looked like milky tea but smelled surprisingly more divine than even that.

He thinks of the rumours spreading about the elder Lecter, the parties he supposedly attends in London, the drink, the opium and debauchery. He thinks of his friend, now, strong and clever and bursting with potential, and how he is both a pride to the family and an embarrassment. Will does not think more on the rumours, he rarely ever did, except to wonder if Hannibal had someone, a secret as well, whom he visited, covering his trips with rumor.

Will shudders against him, overcome, pulling back to rest their foreheads together, eyes closed and lips parted and cheeks slick with tears he can't yet stop. He laughs when Hannibal brings up a thumb to wipe them away, and bites his lip as he leans his face into Hannibal's hand. 

"I missed you so much," he sighs, turning to press his lips softly to Hannibal's palm. "Please stay. Just for now, just -"

“Where would I go?” Hannibal muses. He grasps Will’s cheek to turn their mouths together again, little touches, reveling in the press of lips to lips, firm and fast. They had never come to this, only children when they were so close before, but given more time together - given how much the sensation fills them both - Hannibal wonders if it could have ended any other way.

He doesn’t think of the bet now - it doesn’t matter. What matters is the feel of Will’s hands beneath his jacket, slipping it off Hannibal’s broad shoulders. What matters is that he can lean in again to kiss, unashamed, his lifelong friend. What matters is how Will shivers when Hannibal slips his fingers against his neck, to the collarbone beneath, exploring sun-bright skin revealed beautifully when he works loose Will’s shirt.

Jackets fall aside, shirts to the floor, and bare-chested they press together again, moving backwards towards the little bed with room enough for Will, only, unless Hannibal lays atop him. Heavy, breathless, he bears Will back and turns his head aside to seek Will’s throat beneath open-mouthed heat. Soft fingers rub against Will’s chest, a dark nipple caught between his fingers, and he laughs when Will’s voice breaks on a whimper.

Their legs tangle, awkward youthful adjustments to settle as the bed protests their combined weight. Strong arms wrap over Hannibal’s shoulders again, around his neck, and he leans back enough to meet Will’s gaze, taking in the sweetness of his expression, delight and nervousness both.

“You were brave,” he murmurs, “to come to me as you did. Braver than I have been, in seeking fleeting touches. I thought it would scare you away.”

"More foolish than brave," Will responds, but he is smiling, drawing his hands gently down Hannibal’s chest, dense with hair where there never had been any before, strong muscle that had once been youthful softness.

Will’s cheeks color dark, worried, suddenly, about his own lean appearance, about his lack of the masculinity Hannibal had acquired. He lifts his eyes to Hannibal's again, lips parted, nervous, and wanting to be nowhere else but here, with no one else but him.

"Nothing you could do would scare me away," he whispers, a promise and a challenge both, and Will smiles, small, then wider, before leaning up to kiss Hannibal again, relishing in the feeling of a heavy palm over his heart, and trusting that he will hold it true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks and love to our fabulous beta reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for her amazing attention to detail and swift reading skills! You are the best!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Look at you,” murmurs Hannibal, smile widening when Will averts his eyes, laughter caught on a little breath. “Have you always been so beautiful? Have I been so long distracted that I’ve missed it, entirely?”

Whatever shortcomings Will sees in himself are not seen by Hannibal. Smooth skin hiding lean but strong muscle, earned through hours of labor in the estate, through Will’s own genuine pleasure in the outdoors. He is beautiful.

And he lays beneath Hannibal’s hand now, blushing pink and nervous, and Hannibal considers again those boys in the Hellfire Club who bend so beautifully for him, welcome and beg for the pain he paints in stripes across their rounded backsides, thin shoulders and flushed cheeks. They are nothing next to Will Graham. Nothing in beauty, in mind or in worth compared to the young man beneath Hannibal now.

Will arches up, seeking to touch more, to taste Hannibal's skin again, with soft lips, gentled both consciously and by inexperience, and it occurs to Hannibal that Will may never have been touched this way by anyone else. A fierce possessiveness seizes him to make sure no one ever does. He curls an arm up over Will’s head to hold him gently down, presses kisses to his lips and cheeks and jaw as Hannibal seeks between them to press a palm between Will’s legs.

A shiver, a little sound of surprise and a blush almost glowing on Will’s cheeks from it.

Entirely innocent. Untouched. Virginal.

"Hannibal -"

And entirely his own.

He hardly has to move his hand at all to find Will’s arousal beneath it - Will brings it to Hannibal’s touch instead, hips lifting from the bed on reflex, instinct, seeking contact he’s never had before. Hannibal rubs softly, slowly, as if to teach him a gentler rhythm than even Hannibal himself desires right now, and to prolong this, for as long as they can.

“Look at you,” murmurs Hannibal, smile widening when Will averts his eyes, laughter caught on a little breath. “Have you always been so beautiful? Have I been so long distracted that I’ve missed it entirely?”

Will’s body is tense and pliant all at once for him. His arms clench around Hannibal’s neck, his legs spread. His heels dig against the bed and his head tilts back. Hannibal is helpless to him, enraptured by the man’s responsiveness, the sweet nervousness that unfurls beautifully beneath his hands and mouth. His heart trips forward into a canter against his ribs.

“How many years wasted,” Hannibal says, sighing. “And you have never - have you?”

"I -" Will swallows, tries to keep the little sounds at bay as Hannibal touches him, unfamiliar but so good. He has touched himself, of course, fumbling fingers and quick strokes, thinking of many things, but he has never had another touch him this way.

He shakes his head, humiliated by his lack of experience, strangely warmed by Hannibal's look as he licks his lips and parts them.

"I have never been intimate with another," Will replies quietly, the last word caught on a sigh as Hannibal presses a little harder, still gentle, but more insistently now, making Will feel that friction against himself. He squirms up to seek more as he laughs, soft and sweet, and tries to cover his face with his hand.

Hannibal can’t stop smiling, the expression so restrained in all other moments of his life to one of grave consideration, at most a gathering of little wrinkles beside his eyes. His cheeks hurt from it, a wonderful pain, and he nuzzles aside Will’s splayed fingers to kiss the corner of his mouth, to feel on his lips the heat of Will’s cheek.

“How lucky then, for both of us,” Hannibal murmurs.

“But you -”

“Do not keep a mind for that sort of propriety, dictated by politicians and parish priests,” Hannibal snorts gently. “I have little care for what others do in their own time, and expect the same for myself.”

Hannibal’s fingers catch the buttons on Will’s trousers, and only one slips free before Will lets out a little noise, almost wary, certainly eager. He slows himself then, one at a time between warm meetings of their mouths, each sound savored, vibrating against him.

Will is trembling, not from fear but from a seemingly endless anticipation. Hannibal's fingers are slow, deliberate and clearly practiced, and Will tries to slow his mind from imagining others beneath him, sighing and squirming and pleased as he is. He can feel himself blush darker as he thinks how they were certainly more confident than he, more dynamic and interesting than he.

And then Hannibal wraps his hand over him and tugs, a deliberate curl of his wrist, a slow return down to the base, and Will’s voice pulls from him as he digs his heels into the bed harder, bracing and pushing up and needy.

"I don’t -" He folds his lip between his teeth, bites against it, moans. "I don’t know what to do."

"Does it feel good, Will?"

"Yes.” Breathless, helpless, wide eyed and with bitten red lips, Will laughs and drops his head back to the pillow. "It feels good."

His own hands seek clumsily to touch as well, over Hannibal’s shoulders and down his strong arms, into his hair and splaying light over his still clothed thighs, unsure if he should touch this way as well, unsure what he could do.

 _Anything_ , Hannibal wants to tell him. _You can do anything_. But it wouldn’t be helpful, with the man already uncertain, and so instead Hannibal kisses the furrow from Will’s brow. With a long tug, he lets Will’s cock lay stiff against his belly and instead takes Will’s hand in his own. Gentle lips brush over his fingertips, press firm to his palm, suck softly against his wrist, and he guides Will’s hand down between his legs.

He draws a sharp breath, nearly a gasp, and though Hannibal’s grip is loose enough that Will could take his hand away again, he doesn’t. Fingers splay over the hard ridge lifting Hannibal’s trousers and curl around him, squeezing first before he tries to stroke. It is awkward enough in the position they’re in, let alone the positions they hold outside this bed, but the inexpert touch makes up for method with want, with the darkening gaze that meets Hannibal’s own.

“Just so,” he breathes, rough want deepening his words. “Just so, Will. We are in this way much the same,” he chuckles, nuzzling against Will’s cheek.

Will licks his lips and turns into him, hand working more confidently as he imagines the touches he enjoys and mirrors them here, as he remembers how Hannibal had touched him now. He brings both hands down to work Hannibal's buttons open too, gasps when he feels his cock hot and large against him, different than his own.

"What do you like?" Will asks him, eyes up, seeking between Hannibal’s. "How can I touch you - I want to touch you..."

How many nights Will laid awake in his adolescence imagining taking Hannibal's hand and kissing him. How many nights he imagined touching Hannibal’s skin, kissing it, pressing close to him to feel their hearts beat together. How innocently he had imagined their joining, just lips and touches, how little he wanted then, beyond that.

“You are,” Hannibal reassures him, grinning when Will gives him a wry look despite his shyness. “Here,” he says instead, and wraps his hand over Will’s, squeezing it a little more. He moans, and strokes the work-calloused hand up along the head of his length, to feel the skin around it slip smoothly back and forth. Their fingers lace together, base to tip, held tight, until it is Hannibal’s breath that falls unsteady, broken between parted lips made damp with a press of his tongue.

He takes Will back in hand, and though he doesn’t ask how Will prefers it, he watches. Beneath the corona, his fingers squeeze, thumb tracing the taut little tendon of skin beneath, and higher then to smear across the slick slit. Will’s mouth goes slack but no sound comes forth, stolen by the flurry of his racing heart.

Hannibal’s throat clicks, lips grazing the other man’s ear. “There is so much we can do,” he whispers. “I might take you in my mouth, instead of in hand, to taste and suck. I might curl my fingers or tongue inside you,” he says, as Will’s eyes flare wide at the words and his shudder shakes the bed. “Gently, Will, so gently, to put stars behind your eyes. More then - myself, as you have me in your grip now -”

Will curls trembling fingers in Hannibal’s hair, speechless but for the little whimpers and laughs that scatter from him, unrestrained.

“Or we could do nothing at all. This, or less, only kiss and feel the way the other has changed in our - in my absence,” offers Hannibal. “Truly, it would be enough.”

Will moans softly, the words painting images behind his eyes that he cannot even comprehend, could not even imagine until Hannibal had told him. Do people do this? Mouths and fingers and soft sighs together? Do they allow their bodies to catch fire so, in the hands of another?

"I want you near," Will tells him, shivering. Laughing as Hannibal strokes him, turning his hand to pull a sound from Hannibal too, poised above him in the little bed, in the little house by the lake where Will has lived watching the estate, and Hannibal within it.

"I want you," Will amends, arching up to kiss Hannibal deeply, part his lips for him, closing his eyes, surrendering to his trust and his memories and the man above him. He wants all of the words from Hannibal's lips made flesh, he wants to feel Hannibal against him, within him, and he wants the promise to do so again. To touch and kiss and nuzzle, to pull close and share space as they once did as children.

Everything. Hannibal will give him everything, and what exceeds their bodies now, he will share with Will once they have gathered themselves again. He curls his spine, hooking his hips forward to drive into the tunnel of Will’s hand, cock heavy but held fast by tight fingers. He rocks his entire body along the length of Will’s, their lips crossing paths every time, and it would - truly - be enough, just as they are.

Hannibal can hardly bring himself to pull apart their kiss for more than a breath, but Will’s teeth set against his bottom lip and it’s enough pause for Hannibal to kiss down his throat. His smooth chest. The muscled arms that hold him. The twitching tightness of Will’s belly. Lower, until he’s forced to tuck his knees beneath himself, his length laying stiff against his thighs, and even his breath across Will’s scarlet cock is enough for the man’s fingers to clench in Hannibal’s hair.

“Gentle,” Hannibal tells him, feigning disapproval before Will looks toward him to apologize, and sees the amusement gathered under Hannibal’s eyes. Their gaze so held, a snort of laughter escaping Will, Hannibal waits until Will tries to take a deep breath, and spreads his tongue across his cock.

Whatever air Will had managed escapes him now in a surprised moan, high and pleased. Eyes wide, he watches Hannibal do it again. His entire body shivers from the sensation of it, from the sight of Hannibal so intimately close, pressing his mouth against him where -

"Oh," Will licks his lips, releases them, chest rising and falling on quick needy breaths as his hands continue to seek through Hannibal’s hair, tug it gently, try to slip down between his shoulders. Every stroke of Hannibal's tongue sends Will to shaking, drawing his knees up and trying to spread them further, finding himself imprisoned by the pants tight on his thighs.

Strong hands raise to hold his hips down, to slide the fabric from them and bare Will entirely for him, delighting in the blush that pours from Will’s cheeks to his neck and down, delighting in how even a tickling stroke over a peaked nipple draws a sound.

Will trembles again, overcome, overwhelmed, feeling so good at just being touched this way, by Hannibal - he wants no other. When Hannibal's mouth returns, it is not to lick but to engulf Will in the sweetest heat, slick and shifting, unlike anything he has felt before, and he presses a hand up against his face to stifle his little moans, to press shut the lips that betray him with whimpers and needy little cries.

Will’s eyes close tight, body drawing taut.

"Hannibal," he gasps, seeking with one hand down still to grasp Hannibal's hair, slide over his jaw to feel it slacken as he takes Will deeper into his mouth. It should be shameful, but Will cannot bring himself to feel ashamed. So instead he worships Hannibal's name again from behind his fingers.

Will is so close, Hannibal can taste it - a warm drip smeared across his tongue, another shining over his lips when he pulls them free. He sighs cool against Will’s wet, heated cock, rubbing his mouth open down the side of it. Soft as velvet, pulled so tight that Hannibal can feel Will’s pulse, fingers tight enough in his hair to hurt. It is wonderful, all of it wonderful - entirely simple compared to the debaucheries that Hannibal imagined he now required for stimulation, and he, all the more enraptured for it.

“Breathe,” Hannibal tells him, nestling a kiss into the hollow of his thigh, spreading a hand across his shivering stomach. Will nods, wetting dry lips, and laughs a little, again, and Hannibal marvels that he has somehow lived - if it can be called that - so many years without hearing that sound, let alone drawing it from the man himself. He waits until Will’s breath slows, just a little, and his eyes narrow in pleasure.

He slips his hands beneath Will’s backside, hoisting him gently higher and almost moaning at the small, surprised noise from Will above him. Thumbs press to plush cheeks to open him a little more, and Will shakes his head.

“What are you - Hannibal -”

“Trust me,” he murmurs, before closing his mouth in a long, humming kiss against that illicit, tender skin.

Will jerks with the feeling, trying to scramble free, finding himself entirely too weak to do so, unable, suddenly unwilling, when Hannibal sucks against him again, drawing a litany of little _oh_ s from him as he trembles, presses down against Hannibal’s mouth.

This is filthy, it is wrong, surely forbidden, and yet Will finds himself willingly spreading wider for Hannibal's tongue to press harder to him. He wants more, he wants Hannibal to moan against him again, send trembling skitters down his back to arch it. Will finds all propriety suddenly gone, squirming instead to get more, unaware that he is being so vocal, moaning and whimpering, and begging, _begging_ for more.

Hannibal's fingers stretch him just a little wider, the tip of his tongue pressing just past the tight ring of muscle, and Will’s body vibrates with the sensation. He tries to warn Hannibal, to ask him to stop, even just for a moment, but his words catch broken, and he pulses hot against his own stomach in a release so intense Will sees the stars Hannibal promised he would bring to him.

"I'm sorry," he gasps, humiliated, when Hannibal pulls back to look at him, to look at the mess he has made of himself. "I'm sorry, Hannibal." Will presses his hands to his face to hide himself, and sobs, residual pleasure shaking right to his bones.

“You should not be,” Hannibal sighs against his skin, the quivering thigh pressed tight to his cheek, kissing lazily up through sticky curls of hair and over pointed hips. “Not ever. Not to me, and not for this.”

If there is any shame in such a thing, any sin or wrongdoing, it is forgiven when Hannibal rubs his lips against the warm semen, glistening pale in the candlelight. He gathers it onto his tongue in broad strokes, catlike, to lick the man clean, lips tingling and tongue alight from the heat and salt of it, head swimming from the flavor and scent, musky and masculine and alive. Will’s breath hitches, somewhere between embarrassed laughter and nervous tears, slowing as Hannibal moves upward from his belly again, to meet his lips.

“Nothing that feels so wonderful can be wrong,” Hannibal whispers, sweeping a thumb through the dampness beneath Will’s eye.

“You are a libertine.”

“I am human,” answers Hannibal, and his eyes gather in fond amusement. He nuzzles into Will’s cheek and sighs, before his friend can protest again. “Will, there is hardly room enough for us in this bed, let alone for God.”

Will laughs again, shocked and delighted all at once as he watches his friend smile at him. Always so clever, always so quick and so easily bored. The first to suggest climbing a tree or a hunting trip for fireflies in the dusk.

Now his thoughts run farther and deeper than Will had thought they ever could. Libertine and godless, free and wild, and yet entirely true to himself still, as he is. He can do nothing but arch up to kiss him again, hands snared in his hair just behind his ears, holding more confidently now that Hannibal has shown him the rush of this delight at the tip of his tongue. 

Will slips one hand down between them again, grasping Hannibal with surer fingers to stroke again. He doesn’t know if he can use his mouth as Hannibal had, not with such practiced skill at giving pleasure, but if he asked he would. If Hannibal asked, he would follow him to the ends of the earth.

"What can I do?" Will asks again, breathless and shivering with the need to do more, now that he has been shown he can. He laughs at Hannibal’s answer, just the same as before, but now voiced.

"Anything you want."

So Will slides further down the bed. His fingers tremble as they seek to push Hannibal’s pants from him as well, to bare them both together and arch up against him, skin to skin. With far less interest in himself, and a vast curiosity about Will, Hannibal rubs himself slowly against Will’s stomach, cock prodding gently against Will’s own - now soft - as another curl of hips brings him lower. Thick hair and soft skin creates friction between them, and Hannibal ducks his head with a shaky sigh as Will watches him.

“You are spent,” Hannibal notes. His brow lifts, as does the corner of his mouth. “Shall we wait?”

Without pause, Will shakes his head. “I want you to -”

“To?”

Will grins, abashed, spreading his fingers over Hannibal’s cheek, beneath his jaw, over curved lips and long nose. “I want you,” he says, instead, and between the words and touches, Hannibal could deny him nothing.

And certainly not that.

“It may hurt, at first,” Hannibal tells him, stroking the backs of his fingers down Will’s cheek. “I will do my best to make it not but -”

He does not tell him to scare him, as he would have others. He does not tell him to sate his own prurient interest in the reaction to such a possibility. He tells him because it is only fair to make it known, to one for whom even the concept of such a thing was foreign until tonight.

Hannibal tells him because there is more, still, to tell than this, and forthrightness has ill-suited Hannibal until now, by necessity, when he must become accustomed to it as quickly as Will has to all of this.

Will’s breath shivers, that blush back again, utterly fetching despite - or perhaps because of - what causes it. He swallows, turning to the hand that touches him so gently, and opens his eyes to look at the man who had brought him such pleasure.

"I trust you," he murmurs, stops himself from saying more, that would paint him a naive child, that would turn something so lovely to something awkward and unpleasant. Will holds against his friend and accepts another kiss, another, trembling when Hannibal rubs up against his thigh, hard and hot and large.

He turns, instead, to skim his fingers just as gently over the rest of Hannibal’s body, touching soft smooth skin that has never known a day's work, muscles that have been developed despite. It is the body of a man who knows how to care for it. A doctor, an artist, a libertine and Will's childhood friend.

People cannot change that much.

Will spreads his thighs as Hannibal directs him to, blushing furiously, and kisses, little things, against his jaw. As he does, he watches through hooded eyes as Hannibal slips two fingers into his own mouth. For as much grace as he possesses in the movement, lips stretching and pushed inward again, cheekbones defined as his cheeks hollow, it is still a primal thing to see. Will’s kisses slow, in favor of watching elegant fingers dampen, shining, and to his delight, it is Hannibal’s cheeks that darken now, just beneath his eyes.

He holds his breath as Hannibal presses his fingers down between Will’s legs, but Hannibal waits until a tense breath shudders free before slipping them further still. He spreads his thighs as Hannibal circles where he licked before, and Hannibal kisses his furrowed brow and reminds him only to breathe.

The breach is met with a soft sound of dismay and desire, entangled, and that in itself is enough to cinch Hannibal’s groin tight enough that he has to focus not to finish, as well. Quickly, his mind works, to play that sound again and again so that he might never forget how it sounds to hear his dear friend’s voice fracture so sweetly. Unnecessarily, perhaps, when the gentle movements in and out each draw that noise forth, again and again.

His second finger joins the first. He turns them in slow half-circles, patient, until he feels the quivering of Will’s legs begin to slow, and his body open.

_I loved you, then._

But does he now? Hannibal doesn’t ask. Will he after, after tonight and after Hannibal confesses the game that began this, and became so much more? His distraction, however brief, is caught by bright eyes.

"Did I do something wrong?"

Will’s voice is quiet, still hitching with the gentle way he's touched, stretched open by Hannibal’s meticulous fingers. Not _is something wrong_ \- instead, an immediate assumption that he is not good enough, has displeased, has disappointed. Hannibal wonders if this was always the case, always the response, and he had been blind to it as well.

He kisses Will to reassure him, murmur praise against his flushed skin until Will's smile grows, until his eyes narrow with it and he believes him, if only a little.

It is impossible to describe how it feels, the stretch uncomfortable but not painful, invasive but in the most intimate way - Will does not want Hannibal to stop touching him this way, not for a long time. He squeezes his muscles experimentally and feels Hannibal curl his fingers, his cock twitch against the hollow of Will’s hip.

And then he sees white.

What pleasure he had known at Hannibal’s lips is nothing to what it is at his fingertips. Like sparks and embers, bright and beautiful and ethereal. Will had no idea his body was capable of this, of feeling so much. But it does, and he cries out, lip between his teeth to try and stifle it, as Hannibal curls his fingers again, in the same place, over and over until Will sobs.

“You have done nothing wrong,” Hannibal whispers to him, watching Will with wonder as he strokes against the firm nub inside him. Pressure, and release, and each time Will’s cheeks darken, each time his lips unfurl with beautiful sounds, unrestrained and innocent. Hannibal’s throat clicks and he rests his mouth, open, against Will’s pulse, eyes closed. “I do not imagine that you could, if you tried. Perhaps simply that anything you do would be made lovely by your doing it.”

“Please,” Will chokes. A helpless laugh, a plea, voice pitching higher as he arches back, throat bared to Hannibal’s slow kisses.

“What wasted years these have been,” sighs Hannibal, relishing the pressure that clings to his fingers as he removes them, the long harsh curse that Will breathes out when the blissful torment is relieved. He moves slowly, downward, and then a little higher, between Will’s legs, cock in hand to slow his own untrustworthy movements and stay patient, aligning himself carefully.

Will settles back, but raises his head enough to see Hannibal between his legs, to see him gently stroking himself as he watches Will splayed before him. There is a strange power in just lying there and bringing the man to this, watching his eyes hood and darken, his tongue flick against his lips in a brief motion before he looks at Will again.

“You are beautiful,” he tells Will. Hannibal watches his smile tilt his lips up, his eyes warm and brighten again before he swallows. Will wishes he had more to say than _thank you_ , than _please don’t leave_ , than _please kiss me again_ , but he doesn’t, so he says nothing at all.

He drops his eyes to his own cock, just twitching from sensation against his stomach, watches Hannibal’s beyond, just stroking against the underside of his balls before pressing gently to where his fingers had pushed just moments before, and Will tenses. He is nervous, enough that this pulses in his veins and thumps in his ears, but the excitement, the promise of it is enough to have him breathe slowly out, and reach to rest against Hannibal’s arm to just hold, not encourage or restrain.

Hannibal moves his arm away from the gentle touch, but only to take Will’s hand in his own. Palm to palm they press. Their fingers intertwine. Over a decade passed since the last time they cleaved to each other, over a decade passed since the last time their hands aligned and clasped to fit so neatly together. Hannibal brings them both to his mouth and sighs against Will’s fingertips, smiling softly when they unfurl against his lips.

_Do you love me now?_

_Will you love me, after?_

He draws a breath and rocks forward, pinning Will’s hand gently to the pillow beside him. A gentle gasp is caught beneath a firm kiss as heat surrounds Hannibal, as Will is breached, a prize claimed but so much more than only that. 

Will whimpers, at first in genuine pleasure, then in pain as the pressure grows. Hannibal’s hand squeezes against his own to give him something to grasp and Will breaks the kiss to turn away and pant against the sheets, eyes closed and brows furrowed.

The stretch hurts, enough that Will’s flush pulls like a sheet over pale skin and sweat breaks out against his chest between them. He makes a sound, a pained little shuddering thing, and parts his lips as Hannibal kisses his cheek against his jaw, just beneath his ear.

“It hurts,” Will gasps, slack-jawed and flushed as he trembles beneath Hannibal and the older boy stills his push against him. Will swallows, thick, licks his lips, lets his eyes close and feels the throbbing heat within him, the way his pulse beats in every part of his body. He feels entirely alive, he does not know if he has ever felt so alive before, as this, where every pore and every hair and every breath he can feel with stark clarity, and so he laughs, eyes closed tight and teeth gritted, he laughs.

“Hannibal, please,” he sighs, parting his lips as Hannibal kisses against the corner of his mouth. “Please, Christ, please, move…”

When Hannibal does draw his hips away, Will’s legs tighten against him, thighs pressed to his hips, heels hooking over. Fondness fills him, as Will’s free arm pulls snug around his neck. Their fingers tighten together. It takes little movement at all, with the almost painful pressure around him, for Hannibal to gasp sharp and moan low. It takes little movement at all, pushing slowly back in, for Will’s breath to snare short, and his eyes to glisten.

“Should I -”

“No,” Will pleads, shaking his head. “Don’t stop.”

“Does it -”

“Yes,” laughs Will. “Of course.”

“Shall I -”

There is no more room for questions between the joining of their mouths. Will leans up into Hannibal, heart hammering as if it might crack his own overburdened ribs and shoot right through to Hannibal’s chest instead, like roots splintering through soil, wild with growth. Hannibal does not let go of Will’s hand, not when he feels Will’s body finally relax a little more around him, not when whimpers of pain become heady moans, not when he feels Will’s cock twitch to hardness between them from the brisk rub of Hannibal’s cock against that sensitive spot inside.

Their lips part so Hannibal can hear those low, needy sounds Will makes against him, the way he laughs, even when his body tenses, the way his fingers squeeze against his own, as his free hand works sharp nail marks over Hannibal’s back.

He is so beautiful.

And then he says Hannibal’s name again, and his hand gentles, and curls in Hannibal’s hair and touches their foreheads together as he pants against his lips, pressing his tongue against Hannibal’s lips but not yet kissing him. He is drowning in sensation, body trembling hard and slowly growing used to the rhythm against him. Squeezing as Hannibal pulls out of him, spreading his thighs wider, forcing himself to relax as he pushes in.

Will arches back and bites his lip, relaxes and opens his eyes to watch Hannibal above him.

He knows he will ache in the morning, when he goes to do his chores, he knows that bending will push a blush to his cheeks remembering Hannibal’s lips against him, that arching will part his lips at the memory of doing it beneath Hannibal’s hands. Any and every motion will sing through his body with reminders of this night, when he had poured forth his admission and secrets and found them rewarded.

Hannibal breathes his name. What more is there to say than that, a plea and prayer, apology and affection all at once. Where their palms were made distant by work and idleness, they now stay joined, so tightly together that their fingers throb. He asks, though he never has before and would not bother with anyone else. He asks Will if it’s alright, as he feels his body snaring in ribbons pulled tight enough to pop, from toes to legs to hips and spine and shoulders, curling and straightening, pushing and unfurling.

And when Will nods, wetness clinging to his lashes, and Hannibal’s name whispered past upturned lips, all the sinews in Hannibal stretch so tight they seem to pop, tear, snap all at once. With a groan, limbs shaking, he buries himself and lets spin dizzying release, enough to render him blind, enough that if he were indeed struck blind for this, he would take it with a laugh since the last thing he saw would be Will watching him.

_I loved you, then._

“Do you?” Hannibal asks. “Will you?”

He only knows he’s spoken by how thick the words knot in his throat, and quickly kisses Will to replace their bitterness with the honey of his lips instead. Nonsense words, spoken in a moment of madness, as he spilled heat inside Will’s body. Where the ribbons tore, they now flutter soft, as he sinks heavy into the man beneath him, sweat caught between their palms.

Will shivers, legs wrapped around Hannibal, free hand over his back and clinging to him there as well. The sensation is like nothing he has ever felt before, he feels so entirely full, so entirely filled. He laughs because everything hurts, his entire body is weak from exertion and exhaustion, emotions having flowed from one extreme to the other, never settling to something comfortable, until now.

Will sighs out and presses his nose gently to Hannibal’s neck to breathe him in. He carefully works his fingers free of Hannibal’s and sets them to his back as well, slipping over the sweat there, too. Slowly, he settles his feet to the bed again, as his breathing eases, and he makes only a tiny sound of pain as Hannibal pulls out of him to lay against him instead.

Will blinks, rapid and flickering before laughing again, quietly. He buries his face against Hannibal’s chest as he shakes and holds him, caught between mirth and tears, somewhere he can barely understand. All he knows is his heart has never felt so full, nor so large in his chest that he can barely breathe, in case his lungs crush against it.

“I’m glad I waited for you,” Will whispers against him.

Hannibal curls his fingers through Will's hair. The lamplight fills the single room home with shadow, suddenly, when Hannibal is certain that before all was bathed in gold.

"I'm not certain I deserve the privilege," he whispers against Will's hair. "But I'm glad you told me. I must work now to earn it."

"You've already," Will says. He tucks himself closer to Hannibal's chest, but seeks out his hand again to hold.

Facing each other, chest to chest in the little bed, their legs and arms tangle around the other. Rather than two trying to squeeze into a too-small bed, they lay close enough to be one. Hannibal doesn't argue, there will be time enough to explain and make it all right. Does it really matter how it came to pass, so long as it did? He closes his eyes but Will's voice opens them again.

"You ought to go back to the house."

"Perhaps. But I've no wish to go."

"I don't wish for you to -"

"Then we are in agreement," Hannibal smiles, interrupting lightly. Will only laughs sleepily and shakes his head, allowing Hannibal to reach past and turn out the flame in the lamp. They lay together, sweat-slick and chilled, sticky and close, bathed in darkness.

"When you rise in the morning, I will go," Hannibal tells him. "It is always far earlier than anyone else awakens. And I've no wish to stop being near you now, after so long apart already."

Will smiles, nuzzles up against him more and sighs. His body sings with residual pleasure and throbs with new aches. Will had never thought, could never dream, that he could have this. That Hannibal would want to touch him this way, hold him, kiss him.

It takes Will a long time to fall asleep, fear pulling at him that should he sleep, he would wake alone, and this would all have been a desperate vision. But eventually he does rest, eyes closed and breathing even against the man in front of him, and when he wakes, it is to soft kisses and a hand through his hair, and Will wonders what he has done to earn heaven on earth so early in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks and love to our fabulous beta reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for her amazing attention to detail and swift reading skills! You are the best!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If congratulations are in order, I should offer my own,” Will says softly, taking a step closer to Hannibal. “What is the occasion?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks and love to our fabulous beta reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for her amazing attention to detail and swift reading skills! You are the best!

Hannibal woke, repeatedly, throughout the night.

Not with a start or a fright, but with a coiling like nausea deep in his belly. Each little breath against his heart was a maelstrom, each twitching curl of fingers against his chest a sharp jab of indictment. He stroked Will’s hair to soothe him, as if by touch alone he might breach the man’s unconsciousness and confess his misjudgment, finding forgiveness in a little laugh.

Will it matter to him?

How could it, Hannibal considers, when Will’s words struck so true and brought them to this long-awaited point. What matters the reason for such a string events to begin, so long as they do?

And so again Hannibal slept, only to stir again with the same questions, and the same uneasy reasoning for them. Again and again, until finally, it is Will’s voice that draws him from that space between waking and sleep.

“You should go.”

The bed is empty beside him. With a hum, Hannibal arches a brow, and props his cheek against his palm, elbow sinking into the still-warm bed. “Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Will answers. He looks up with surprise from beneath his hair, bent over at the waist to step into his trousers. “But one has nothing to do with the other.”

“No,” agrees Hannibal. “Only one truly matters.”

“Desire, more than propriety. This seems to be a theme,” grins Will, shaking his head.

Hannibal’s smile widens a little. “A philosophy, guiding and pure.”

He rolls to his back, spreading over the thin mattress to push his arms above his head. They hit the wall, and so he slides down a little further, only to find that now his feet slip from the bed. He knows Will is watching, cheeks flushed and eyes wide, and so he skims a hand down along his stomach until he hears him take a breath.

“I wish to spend time with you today,” Hannibal tells him. “Will you come with me?”

Will laughs, and this laugh is a little different from the joyful, surprised sounds of the night before. Will straightens, working his pants closed as he regards Hannibal before him, still lounging in bed without a care in the world. The lord of the estate, as he was born to be. Will’s lips press into his mouth a moment, in genuine fondness, before he shakes his head.

“I have work,” Will replies, apologetic, and he turns away as Hannibal’s brows furrow at the rejection. He sits up in the little bed to watch Will gather his shirt from the floor and start to do it up before realizing it is not his shirt but Hannibal’s. A blush floods his cheeks again and he carefully undoes the buttons.

“You should wear it,” Hannibal tells him, and Will shakes his head again.

“My work gets clothes dirty,” he explains. “I cannot mar your clothes in such a way. Or you.” Will is careful to set the shirt aside and take up his own this time. “I must work,” he repeats, “but I will come to you after I have finished, in the evening, perhaps? After supper?”

“Surely the flowerbeds can wait a day,” Hannibal’s tone tilts into a laugh and Will gives him a look, narrow-eyed and amused, before walking closer and setting one knee to the bed, relishing in the shiver that takes him as Hannibal immediately presses a warm palm against his thigh.

“Hannibal, what do you think my job is?”

“I’ve studied botany,” Hannibal replies loftily, as his hand rides higher up to Will’s hip.

“That isn’t what I asked,” says Will. “My job, my work - tell me what you think I do all day.”

“You keep the flowers.” Hannibal raises his chin, leaning to seek a kiss and finding only air as Will leans back, playful. “You remove weeds, when they appear. Fish leaves from the pond. Replace wilted flowers with lively ones, and stop ones that are over-lively from going outside their bounds. You - ah,” he considers. “You spend time with your dog. All of the dogs. What would one day cost you, truly?”

Ducking his head, Will can’t help but laugh. His tongue presses between his lips, the explanation so wonderfully simple - idyllic, really - compared to the reality. His eyes raise first, and then his chin, as he bears Hannibal back to sprawl atop him, laying against his chest.

“Do you know, Hannibal, that each hyacinth requires no more and no less than three fingers of space between them? That even the beds of wildflowers are anything but, each carefully chosen and arranged so that one does not overbear the other, and so that all can be seen from any angle? To say nothing of the birches -”

“What about the birches?”

“No leaves are permitted to settle against the earth beneath. No bark is allowed to darken their trunks -”

“But that is their bark,” Hannibal blinks. “It’s white.”

“Beneath grey, usually, that flakes and peels to reveal the white beneath. Per your father’s instructions, the trunks are to be scrubbed free of the outer layer, so that they are pristinely white.”

Eyes widening, Hannibal’s grin spreads and he shakes his head. “No.”

“Yes,” Will answers gravely, touching along the broad ridge of Hannibal’s collarbone. “How many gardens do you have, Hannibal?”

The older boy’s lips part, and his eyes narrow. “Counting the groves?”

“No, no, neither the groves of trees nor the walkways nor the orchard,” Will allows, with wry generosity. “Only gardens.”

“There is - the Hyacinth Garden - the herb garden,” Hannibal trails off. “Three. There are three gardens.”

“Six, Hannibal. Six, and all the rest of it, and the dogs, and that is why you should return to the house,” Will whispers against his mouth. “There is little enough daylight as it is.”

“Then let me come with you,” Hannibal murmurs. “I’ll help tend the herbs.”

He does not want to let him go, suddenly struck with wariness that if he does, the feelings between them - no matter how long Will has harbored them - will evaporate like morning dew.

Will laughs again, but now allows Hannibal to kiss him, feels his body warm and weaken at the sensation as it did the first time Hannibal had. Less than a day ago, he realizes, just mere hours that seem like an eternity now, masking the previous waiting before it.

Will parts them with a gentle hand to Hannibal’s chest and nuzzles their noses together before stepping back again.

“Will you distract me?” he asks, and smiles wider when Hannibal gravely shakes his head. “That is the first lie you have told me,” Will muses, drawing a hand through his hair, and despite his stoic attempt to keep his expression indifferent, a smile warms through against the blush.

“If you wish, you may come with me, but I will work, I will be busy.” He swallows. He does not think of the places that one can stand that are hidden from view of the estate house, that are hidden from every angle but the one they occupy. He does not tell Hannibal of them, but he will show him. In the orchard, near the lake, in amongst the wildflowers…

What would one day do, anyway, should he neglect his work?

He shakes his head, for himself, to clear the absurd idea from his mind, and passes Hannibal his shirt to dress. Hannibal takes it, rueful still, as much at the idea of spending a day working as wearing clothes he’s already sullied. Still, he sits up enough to shoulder into it, buttoning it as neatly as he can while frowning at the wrinkles, and dragging himself from the little bed to find his trousers.

“Do you take breakfast?”

Will snorts, amused. “As I work.”

“Terrible,” sighs Hannibal, biting his tongue too late to stop the words that draw a sudden look from the other man. “You should -”

“As I work,” Will repeats.

Hannibal does not protest again. No matter how their bodies and hearts have joined, suddenly and irrevocably, there are still vast gulfs between them, of class and status, assumptions and judgments. Their lives have been lived separated, in every way imaginable, differences that exceed even conscious awareness. Hannibal has never considered that his boredom might be a privilege, rather than a burden, and frowns at the thought.

“Let me work a little while,” Will asks. “Go to the house, take your breakfast. Meet me in the herb garden midday and -”

“I will kiss you then,” Hannibal warns him, mildly.

Will’s cheeks color and he ducks his head, eyes up from beneath his fringe.

“Then you will,” he replies.

\---

Hannibal finds himself watching the garden from his room like a man hypnotized. He cannot do a button without watching Will work among the wildflowers for several moments before he starts another. It is ludicrous, it is absurd, and yet the guilt still coils within him like a restless snake, that at any moment will strike and bite to set itself free.

He must tell him, must find a way to make Will understand that what started as a childish bet, led him to the one thing he had been too blind to see.

He goes to breakfast in a daze, notes only that his sister smiles at his distracted demeanor, counting her own victory with Will this morning, should she go and see him, but Hannibal does not pay her much mind. He thinks of the soft sounds Will had made against him in his sleep, he thinks of his words, those soft, kind words that had pressed to his skin like fingertips.

He must tell him. He will. And he will make him understand.

“ _Brother_ ,” Mischa calls from across the table, stretching an arm emphatically towards him. He lifts his eyes and she, her brows. “Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

“Not a one.”

“At least he’s honest,” she quips to Alana, whose curious gaze is similarly settled on the eldest Lecter. “I asked if you had any plans today.”

Hannibal hides his expression behind his tea, and swallows roughly. “None in particular.”

Beyond seeking Will, speaking to him, explaining and kissing away the furrows in his brow -

“No surprise there,” his sister sighs. “I might go riding.”

“Very well.”

“Will you join me?”

“Not today, I think.”

Mischa’s eyes narrow, and then her expression smooths again, effortlessly, as she stands. “Very well,” she repeats.

“A walk, perhaps.”

“The air would do you well.”

And with no more than that, she goes, and for a moment Alana looks as though to speak but decides against it, following her charge. Hannibal waits until their steps grow softer and softer through the house, then silent, before removing himself similarly from the room to make his way outside.

It is near enough to midday, and though Hannibal tries to slow his steps to let the sun rise higher into the sky, he is entirely too distracted to do so. The tension in his ribs is taut enough to snap them, and the relief and dread in knowing it will - when the moment is right - be relieved, enough that he is driven forward despite himself. One could not be angry on a day such as this, surely, on grounds so beautifully kept. Hannibal passes through the paths, beyond the beds of flowers in full fragrant glory, and wonders at their presence in a way he never has before.

He anticipates that Will is going to tense before he relaxes against him, that he will hesitate to press his hands against Hannibal’s clothes for fear of dirtying them. He anticipates that he will pull Will close and whisper to him, that he loves him, that he was blind, that he is no longer and he will make up for every moment he missed in their childhood twofold, right now, with him.

He sees Will before he’s realized how far he has gone through the grounds, he sees him with his back to the way Hannibal is going, hands behind his back as he ducks his head. In thought, perhaps, in contemplation, and he is so beautiful in that moment that Hannibal can barely breathe. 

Anything. He will do anything to have him, and to have him understand.

The bet no longer matters. He doubts the bet ever did matter. And in a moment of utter whimsy wonders if Mischa knew, knew the whole time, and engineered this to happen.

He reaches Will and turns him, hands gentle against his shoulders, and as Will parts his lips to greet him, Hannibal kisses him, pressing their bodies together as they had pressed that morning, and shivers hearing the soft little whimper Will makes against him as he does.

“This isn’t the herb garden,” Will whispers, and Hannibal laughs, fingers spreading through Will’s hair and stirring dust into the sun, touching kisses across smudged cheeks, the sun-red bridge of his nose, soft lips that spread for him so sweetly -

“Damn!”

Both men freeze. Mischa’s exclamation rings in the silence that follows the petulant stamp of a foot against the path, and as Will quickly jerks himself away from Hannibal’s hands, the elder Lecter merely stands so still, it’s as if for a moment he hopes that perhaps by not moving, she’ll not see them. She’ll not have seen them. She’ll not be striding closer with a sigh, to just behind his shoulder.

“God, how did you _do_ it?”

“Mischa.”

“Perhaps I have underestimated you since you’ve started doubling your visits to the city this summer,” she says, resting her chin against Hannibal’s shoulder and watching Will who blinks, confused, cheeks still bright with humiliation. He seeks between the two siblings with bright eyes and swallows.

“I’m sorry, I -”

“Mischa,” Hannibal intones, voice steady, to his own amazement. “You were going to go riding. The stables are -”

“Just beyond, over there,” she sighs, waving a hand in their general direction. “You mentioned going for a walk and I thought, well, doesn’t that sound like just the thing?”

“Doesn’t it,” Hannibal says. “Perhaps you might continue then -”

“And not congratulate you?”

“Congratulate?” Will asks, looking from one Lecter to the other for explanation, but Hannibal turns towards Mischa quickly enough that she draws her hand back from his arm as if scalded.

“Go, Mischa. Now. To the stables. To the house. Just _go_.”

“Hannibal,” Will’s voice is quiet, very small, and for a moment Mischa slips her eyes from her brother to regard the man before them, entirely human, entirely vulnerable with his hands at his sides and expression so open. There has never been genuine cruelty between the siblings, always play and jest but never hurt. They had grown quickly to rely on each other with their parents being so often away.

Mischa directs her eyes away again, a warmth growing in her chest that boils to unpleasant. Then she lowers herself in a small curtsey and offers a smile to her brother.

“Perhaps later, then,” she says, allows another look to slip over Will’s form as he finds it in himself, somewhere far away, to bow to her as she leaves, though he says nothing in parting. He waits until Mischa goes, until just he and Hannibal remain in the garden. Will swallows, and lifts his eyes to seek Hannibal’s.

“If congratulations are in order, I should offer my own,” he says softly, taking a step closer. “What is the occasion?”

“Nothing. There is none,” Hannibal answers quickly, too quickly, he knows, and ducking his head gathers himself. He turns to watch over his shoulder as Mischa makes her way towards the stables, in the distance. He waits with no more sound between them than the ceaseless drumbeat of his own heart and the tempo of his pulse, buzzing in his ears. To deny it now pushes the guilt deeper, when instead it should be a simple relief. To deny it now complicates the context more than the contest between the Lecters already has.

It makes the man complicit in deception, who has tried for endless hours now to convince himself that he is not.

“I will explain,” he says, jaw working, and he takes Will’s hand in his own to tug him further out of sight, just a few steps before Will stops. He offers Hannibal a small smile, encouraging, and Hannibal would offer his heart still bleeding from the cage of his ribs in return to keep Will’s lips turned just so.

“There was a wager -”

Will blinks. “A wager?”

Hannibal knows that there is a moment yet before he understands, a moment more for him to change the course of the admission, to leave Will ignorant of it just a day more, a week, perhaps forever. Perhaps long enough for them to be happy, to bring this up as a silly memory they can both laugh off, not something so close, so raw as it is now.

“A wager,” Hannibal repeats, “between two children turned stupid by summer. A wager that no longer applies, that no longer matters -”

Will’s smile seems to fade with the passing breeze, one moment warm and there, the next gone, a shiver of breath to keep his lips parted before they, too, close and he swallows, gently draws his hand from Hannibal’s.

“What were the terms?” He asks.

“Will -”

“What was the wager,” Will asks, voice soft, “made between two children turned stupid by summer, Hannibal?”

The hours of justification fall flat. They wither and they die, as Hannibal’s lips part in silence, because there are no right words for what seemed so amusing at the time and now rings as so incredibly cruel. He draws himself up a little taller, and does not let himself look away from Will’s eyes, searching his own. Hannibal holds himself with proper bearing as he’s been taught, because there is no other way for him to be.

Perhaps this is the truth of him.

“A challenge, to see who might win your favor first,” Hannibal says softly.

“What terms?” Will asks, as his expression begins to close, brows gathering, gaze sharpening with every stupid, mindless thump of Hannibal’s heart. “Hannibal,” he insists. “What were the terms?”

“It doesn’t matter -”

“It matters very much,” Will breathes, as his hands gather to fists at his sides.

Only then does Hannibal bow his head, and whisper, “That she might tempt you to propose. And that I -”

“That you.”

“That I would bed you before you did.”

“That you -” Will swallows, licks his lips and does not repeat the rest. His eyes are barely open, and even in that his lashes flicker in a proxy of a blink. He stays very still, so still that it is almost as though he does not breathe. It is only when Hannibal steps closer that Will moves at all, and in that motion – sharp, like that of a startled animal – brings them both to here, to this moment.

“Congratulations,” Will whispers, and his voice sounds like the edges of a broken cup, pushed from a table in childish displeasure, shattered on the floor.

“Will –“

“A wager well won,” he nods, eyes still averted before he raises his chin and watches after Mischa, though she has long gone to the stables, now, and within them. “Its subject well bedded.”

“Will, please –“

“Did the city grow dull for you?” Will asks, and his eyes are back to Hannibal’s, then, holding his gaze with desperate strength. “So long to travel and so little to see that you felt to find your distractions here?”

“Listen to me, Will, it was -”

“Probably not as good as the ones in London,” Will finishes for him, nodding once, parting his lips with his tongue and gazing out at the garden as if he’s never seen it before. “Once you’ve had all those, I - I must have been very disappointing.”

“It was foolish,” Hannibal says. “A foolish thing, and cruel, but I meant all that I said - does it matter, truly, when my eyes have been so opened?”

Will turns to him quickly then, brows drawn close and lips parted as his breathing quickens. “Does it matter?” He repeats softly. “Does it _matter_? No, Hannibal, hardly. Why should it matter when I spent my life waiting for you to see me, and you did only for a wager. I should be grateful, after all, for it, that you saw me at all.”

“That is not true.”

“Is it not?” Will swallows, draws up his chin to press his lips tight together, to stop them trembling. “In our years worlds apart, did you once think of me as your friend? Did you once think of me at all?” Will shakes his head. “I thought of you.”

“I did, Will -”

“You’re lying,” Will whispers, eyes wide.

“As much as I could -”

“Truth, there, a little at least - in bits and pieces, when it’s convenient for you, grounded in untruth,” Will laughs, sudden and loud, before pressing a hand across his mouth.

“Let me prove it,” Hannibal pleads. He sets his hand against Will’s shaking shoulder, startled when Will jerks free from it. “Let me show you my heart, and how you’ve moved me, let me -”

“You’ve shown me your heart. What’s left of it, anyway.” Will steps back, again, another, and lifts his hands before letting them drop. “Do not keep me there. I do not wish to live in something so lifeless.”

“I was a fool,” Hannibal tells him, and he can sense, can feel how that honesty holds Will still for a moment more. “I was a stupid child when I should have long outgrown such things. Please, Will, believe me that my feelings for you are true. Believe me that I will spend my life proving that to you, if you let me.”

“I believe,” Will sighs, eyes flicking to the sky as he blinks, quick, to hold his tears at bay a moment longer. “That we have both grown, Hannibal, and yet neither of us have outgrown such childish things as bets and love.”

Hannibal watches him turn, but does not know what else to say to bring him back, as these words burn just as surely in his chest as those of love did the night before. He does not try to stop him going, and Will does, straightening his shoulders and bringing the heel of his hand to press against his eye before pushing himself to walk away, to bend to retrieve a bucket he had left near the flowerbed.

“I’m sorry,” Hannibal whispers, and if Will hears him, it does little to slow his steps.

The roses around him that sigh in the gentle wind are pale, not white but nearly so. Warm cream flushes to pink where the petals unfurl, and Hannibal recalls in them the blush that had warmed Will’s cheeks only hours before. It will not be his to see again, and Hannibal allows that he does not deserve it. He never did, not after working so many years to forget what mattered most that it had rendered him blind to anything but his own selfishness.

Will planted these roses for him, years ago, and Hannibal never noticed until now. Simple beauty, laid bare before him, fascinating and wild, and wasted on one too corrupt to let it take root. He lifts a hand as if to touch a velvet petal and then lowers it, before that too is poisoned.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I suppose," Beverly says, "that should the right words reach the right ears, those tangled lines that have snared another could be undone. Those to whom the words belong could make clear the misconceptions to those that had misheard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks and love to our fabulous beta reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for her amazing attention to detail and swift reading skills! You are the best!

It is rare that Alana finds herself sent gently away by her charge before the day has fully ended. Usually Mischa enjoys the company of her nearby, even if they do not speak, even if Mischa is practicing her instruments or having a riding lesson, she enjoys having Alana with her. 

But today, she finds the girl forlorn, a smile soft when she asks Alana to enjoy her day as she wishes.

“It would please me,” Mischa says, and frowns at her choice of words. “I simply wish for you to know that I enjoy your company, I do not want you to think that I force my own on you, and to remember that if you ever wish for your own space, that you should take it as you please.”

Alana blinks and reaches for her, to find Mischa gently taking her hand and placing it to her cheek.

“Mischa, are you well?”

“I am,” she assures her, and with those words, turns to return to her chambers alone, leaving Alana to her day, and her plans, building themselves before her now that she has the time to make them.

She finds herself, inevitably, on her way to the stables, and here, this time, she finds Beverly.

This relationship too has become as mysterious as the sudden sea change in her charge. The reason isn’t clear, but Alana has little seen the woman, and when she has, there has not been space enough between their hurried whispers for her to say the oft-practiced words that Will overheard, now forgotten. Beverly shows nothing ill-at-ease in her countenance - only the same amusement that always lingers about her, mild and mischievous.

“Come to fetch your lady’s puppy?”

Alana shakes her head, then lifts her brows. “Perhaps I will bring her,” she allows, before smoothing her skirts to settle to the bench beside the stalls. “Mischa has given me the day off, in a very solemn fashion.”

“Solemn or not,” Beverly shrugs, “one knows better than to look one of these in the mouth.” She nods towards the horses, one of whom snorts as if in response. She glances back to Alana, eyes gathered in delight, but they relax as she watches Alana fret with fingers over her skirt.

“Something is amiss.”

“More than usual, you mean.”

“I do mean,” agrees Alana, rueful. “The young miss is adrift, and the elder is absent entirely, hidden away somewhere. Both amiss in being missing, one in spirit, and one in body.”

Beverly hums, brow raised, and leans back against one of the doors to the stalls to watch Alana more openly.

“As they are missing, so is he,” Beverly comments after a moment, lifting her chin to gesture towards the dividing wall between stable and kennel. “This morning he came through, and I have not seen him since. The pups were fed by me, this afternoon, and I fear will be in the evening as well.”

“It is not like Will to be neglectful.”

“Entirely unlike,” Beverly agrees. “It seems the house has been turned on its ears by the siblings, now, and they reap their rewards for it properly.”

Alana considers the words, the slight sneer aimed not at the gentle man who works beside Beverly, but the owners of the house who so neglect it in their youthful games. She wonders. Will had watched her with such wide eyes when she had admitted her confession was not for him, but there had been a hope there, a lingering and barely lit hope for such words - from another.

“I fear,” she says, “I may have instigated a turn of events unexpected in the game.”

“You didn’t tell him -”

“I did not,” Alana confirms, but quickly shakes her head, curls slipping loose until finally she’s had enough, and reaches back to pluck the pins from her hair and let all drape across her shoulders. “I only -”

“You -” Beverly watches wide-eyed as Alana claps her hairpins to the old bench, and kicks her shoes into the straw, to push bare toes into the cool earth instead. She grips the slats under her legs and ducks her head, sighing.

“He overheard me, speaking. Reciting. Whatever it was -”

“What was -”

“What was matters not, now,” insists Alana. “He thought I spoke to him. A - A poorly written poem, of sorts -”

“Aren’t most poems poorly written?”

“Most writing itself,” Alana says, before lifting her hand to wave away what she’s so near to repeating, to disperse Beverly’s distraction. “I told him my words were not meant for him, but that night he came to the house - to Hannibal - and shortly after both left. I saw them, the latter following the former as if they were hound and quarry, across the yard -”

“Such cataclysmic words cannot be, by definition, poorly written.”

“Poorly meant, perhaps.”

“When heard by another they were not meant for.”

“Yes, but -”

“Should they perhaps be heard by their intended audience, the harmful events may reverse?” Beverly suggests. There is a curl in her smile that warms Alana’s cheeks before she ducks her head and catches her hair to slide behind her ear again, before it can dangle across her eyes.

“How?” She asks quietly, smiling when she hears Beverly step closer, and she watches as her boots come into her circle of vision before lifting her head to rest on her hand and watch.

“Words hold a certain power,” Beverly explains, her own head ducked and eyes away. “They hold the power to encourage and convince, coerce and comfort. But words misunderstood can lead to disastrous events.”

“Like hounds chasing swans?”

“Or cats and mice.”

Alana smiles, eyes narrowing. “Let’s stay with Katz.”

“Let’s,” Beverly grins, before tempering her smile again. “I suppose, I feel that should the right words reach the right ears, those tangled lines that have snared another could be undone. Those to whom the words belong could make clear the misconceptions to those that had misheard.”

“You dizzy me,” sighs Alana. Beverly tilts her head in silent question, and Alana only laughs, palms pressing over her eyes.

“That was it, really, in its abbreviated entirety. You dizzy me, Beverly Katz, you spin me in circles with only a look, let alone your words and wit.” Drawing her lower lip between her teeth, Alana holds it pressed there for a moment before adding, wry. “Your eyes and - the rest of you.”

“The rest of me.”

“All of you. Every part of you, wonderful and terrible,” she declares, lowering her hands from her eyes to fold them together between her knees, bright eyes uplifted to the smarty suited woman before her. “You move my heart and mind and -

“The rest of you,” Beverly interjects.

“The rest of me. All of me. All of you moves all of me, and I am so glad to be your friend but it makes me mad, absolutely mad at ni-”

Silence plucks between them, Alana with her mouth agape in mild horror at her own words, nothing at all what she had practiced saying, and Beverly - she takes a step nearer, and plucks loose her gloves before setting her fingers under Alana’s chin.

“Speak,” whispers Beverly, grinning bright.

“Every night. Every night I lie awake and I loathe you, Beverly Katz, for not being there to replace my hands with your own.”

It is the only time that Alana has ever seen Beverly truly surprised. She starts to speak, lips shaping words that do not come, until with a brusque clearing of her throat, she murmurs, “How peculiar that he would mistake those words as meant for him.”

“Perhaps he had imagined them spoken by another,” Alana suggests, cheek still hot beneath Beverly’s hand as she strokes her knuckles over it.

“But the words were addressed to -”

“- ‘my dearest friend’.” Alana smiles as Beverly laughs, and the dark-eyed horse-master shifts enough to rest one knee against the wooden floor, cupping Alana’s face.

“I suppose I cannot fault you your taste in friends,” Beverly decides, watching Alana’s eyes narrow in pleasure, her chin lift proudly. “Nor him his misunderstanding.”

“You suppose?”

“You claim to loathe me.”

“I loathe your absence from me,” Alana corrects. She sets her hand to Beverly’s raised knee as her cheek is stroked with a gentle thumb just beneath her eye. 

Beverly leans a little closer, smiling when Alana leans back, brow up. “Absences can be reversed,” Beverly points out.

“And words?”

“Corrected,” Beverly muses. With a soft intake of breath, she moves to close the scant distance between them, laughing low when instead Alana presses their foreheads together to keep her at bay a moment longer. Just a moment longer.

“And hearts?” she whispers, smiling when Beverly turns her head just enough, just a little, and sighs against her.

“Mended,” she says, and leans in to press their lips together.

It is a far sweeter pleasure to feel the softness of their lips spread so warmly together than any boys that either stole kisses from when they were young. It was only then, only because all the girls were doing it, and not long after discarded like so many other whims of childhood. It is this they’ve sought, this they’ve wanted, this they’ve whispered in laughs against the other’s skin in hallways. The need for quiet was their excuse to press the lengths of their bodies together, the need for conspiracy in all its excitement what pushed their hands to the other’s belly, curled fingers around lean arms, swept hair back from the other’s face.

Dearest friends, and so much more.

Beverly settles her other knee to the ground, and sits back on her heels. Between Alana’s legs, skirt draped over her breeches, she kneels and tilts her head up as flowers do towards the sun. Slender fingers spread over her cheeks, and Alana strokes back to push the horse-master’s hat aside. With a hollow thump, it goes, and Beverly reaches back to unknot the bun at the back of her neck only to find her hand caught and held.

“Let me,” she asks, and Beverly kisses her again when Alana’s nose wrinkles in pleasure. She shakes her head and touches their lips together once more, almost prim, before explaining softly, “I’ve never seen it.”

“There’s a reason for that,” sighs Beverly, but she lowers her head to let Alana loosen the knot. Dark hair spills sleek as oil down her back, long and straight. Alana has to hold her breath to stop from laughing.

“There’s so much of it.”

“I could ensure that there is less, if you don’t find it pleasing. There are shears, just beyond -”

“For tidying tails.”

Beverly simply grins. She rests a hand against Alana’s neck to keep her near, and cannot help but appreciate having such a vast length of hair when lithe fingers slide through it, gathering it, releasing, tugging softly. They kiss until their lips swell and darken, like late-summer fruit. They kiss until Beverly’s feet go numb. They kiss until their faces hurt from smiling and only then does Alana finally meet the clever curves of Beverly’s mouth with a finger.

“Enough,” she whispers. And as she watches her fingertip taken between Beverly’s teeth, she sighs. “Behave yourself, horse-master, just because I’ve grown fond of you does mean you’re given rein -”

“That’s a good one,” Beverly murmurs around Alana’s finger.

“Thank you, I know. It does not give you rein to misbehave. Remember that you are a lady. Gentleman. Both, really. Either. It hardly matters. You are mine and you will act as such.”

Beverly nods, and releases Alana’s finger with a kiss, another to her brow, as she gathers Alana’s hairpins back into her hand.

“And I will do as I promised. If I can untangle this every night,” she murmurs, pointing towards the lank hair long around her jacketed shoulders, “then I can certainly unsnare a few words.”

Alana slumps back against the stable wall, lip held between her teeth before she shakes her head. “Oh,” she sighs. “Be careful, will you? I’ve made enough of a mess -”

“You’ve not. The eldest has, that dreadful heir, they’d do well to give him a stipend and ask him to change his name - let him do as he pleases without involving the rest of us.” Beverly straightens and meets Alana’s eyes, head tilting to the side, her smile fond. “I will listen, more than speak. I am yours, after all, and I will carry the title with grace.”

Alana’s hand is soft beneath her lips as Beverly touches them to her knuckles. With no more than that - and so much more now than what she came in with - Beverly takes her hat and her leave, coiling her bun back into place as she goes.

“You know,” Beverly says, just outside the door that she keeps propped with her toes, “he wasn’t the only one that overheard you that day.”

Eyes wide, Alana’s lips fall slack to ask, and then squeeze shut, eyes narrowed. “You -”

“Me,” grins Beverly. “I just wanted to hear it again. It improved, the second time over.”

She flees, before Alana’s flung shoe can catch her.

\---

The walks are swept, the birches scrubbed, and above the estate, the sky grows gently gray with gathering clouds, threats of an oncoming rain shower. There is no sign of Will by the flowerbeds at the front of the house or the back, he is not in the west orchard, nor by the lake.

Beverly knocks on his door long enough to know he is certainly not there, no one patient enough to withstand her onslaught of endless knocking and calling of his name - and choice phrases ladies should perhaps not utter - so she returns to the stables and kennels, opening the door to seek within.

It is several hours passed, now, since she had spoken to Alana, and Alana had long since gone to the estate house with Rose in her arms, the little pup comfortable and curled. The rest of the puppies greet Beverly when she comes in, and she bends to stroke them, furry little things that nuzzle and nudge against her boots. But still no Will, not here, with them. But, tellingly, no Winston either.

Beverly pushes herself to stand, a cursory check on the little trough of water to make sure it is filled and clean for the dogs before she leaves them again, and she heads towards the small woods at the end of the property.

Winston notices her first, with a joyful bark and racing paws and tail fluttering like a flag behind him, and for a moment, Beverly does not see Will at all. And then she looks up and laughs, seeing him pressed into the curved elbow of a heavyset branch, several feet above the ground where she stands.

“You forgot to feed your pack,” Beverly calls to him. She waves when he looks, smiling as his eyes narrow in confusion, red-rimmed, though she would never comment.

“I fed them just before -”

“It is half past three, Will,” Beverly tells him gently, and Will curses, draws up a knee as though to climb from the tree, but instead just rests his forehead against it with a long exhaled hum.

“Thanks,” he manages. She squints.

“May I come in?”

“To the tree?”

“Yes.”

“There’s not room for us both.”

Beverly sighs and takes a step back. She runs her eyes across the branches, and finding one, takes a running leap to vault herself up to catch it. Her hands scramble before they find purchase, and with a swing, she pulls herself up, clambering to a branch near enough that they can speak.

“There’s always room,” she grins, but with little more than a dour look in response, she mutes it to a mirror of his somber expression. “Talk to me, Graham.”

“I’ve nothing to say.”

“You’ve enough to say that it’s burdened your shoulders,” she corrects gently. “Enough that it’s distracted you from the work you enjoy. You need not be specific, but you know I’m happy to help shoulder the load, whether work or otherwise.”

Will makes a bitter sound, lips pursing, as he taps his fingertips against his knee, still drawn up.

“Otherwise,” he sighs, letting his foot slowly drop to swing beneath the branch he rests on. “Otherwise, I have found myself educated, reminded not to be naive, and that the stars burn if you get too close to them, just as the sun did Icarus to cause him to fall.”

“The sun is a star,” Beverly tells him, and Will’s eyes slide to her, expression unimpressed. “And Icarus fell for pride, not for being naive.”

“I thought myself more than I am,” Will amends. “That is pride.”

“It is also not unwarranted,” Beverly says, swinging one leg as he swings his own, until he notices, slows his pace to watch her do the same. It brings a hint of a smile to his lips but nothing more. Even that is a victory for her.

“I forgot myself, and I forgot time,” Will says at length. “I only have myself to blame for it.”

It is not hard to guess what’s happened. A wounded heart is always worn outward, when the one bearing it wants nothing more than to keep it hidden until it heals again. His pain is evident in every line drawn unfairly across his face, and for a moment Beverly considers going to the house instead, to tell the Lecters just what she thinks of them both.

“You were made to forget, by those who sought to benefit from your forgetting,” she amends. Will’s eyes snap upward again and she lifts her hands, balanced precariously. “I do not know details of how you’ve been undone by them, only that they’ve done so, in tandem, and deliberately.”

“I’m not relieved to hear it,” he says. “Who else knows?”

“Few, very few, only those closest to the house and the garden."

Will snorts, nothing more to say, it seems, and so Beverly speaks instead in the silence he yields her without yet leaving.

"You are not to blame for what they've become. You know yourself more than most how fields left untended become rampant with weeds. So is their boredom - while they have been given room to flourish, so too have their poisons." It does little to assuage the man, and she frowns, picking at the bark beneath her hand. "But the fields are not to blame for that. They are not evil. Merely unrestrained. It may be simply that they are in need of knowing where their roots have been invaded. I'm not certain anyone has ever done so."

Will snorts, but it isn’t amused, it’s aimed at himself, another pressing to the bruise of his humiliation. For a moment he is quiet, then he brings a hand to his hair and draws it back from his face, turning to finally look at Beverly properly. 

Their friendship had grown seemingly overnight, when she had started working with the horses, and he had been tasked to help, to guide, to learn, immediately, that she knew much more of the creatures than he ever had. He knew plants, he did not know horses. He thinks of how often they had spoken together, working hard with the horses, working with the dogs when Will had needed the help wrangling litters and training the little creatures. He thinks of how neither had ever asked anything of the other, but had always given just what was needed.

“I told him I loved him,” he admits, and Beverly raises an eyebrow.

“And how did he respond?”

“He followed me home,” Will laughs, pressing his lips together before relaxing them. “He told me he was sorry,” he adds, “for the childhood we both ended up missing.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I believe him that,” Will allows.

“Then, perhaps there is still something of worth to be harvested,” she considers, “among the obvious brambles therein.”

“Or not.”

“Or… not,” allows Beverly, but the words lift into a question, and both their brows furrow.

“Had they not thought this all so amusing, he’d not have taken any interest in me more than he has for years. He’d have paid little attention and thought less still of -”

Beverly waits, silent.

“Of what we had, once, which was nothing. Childhood friends, and little more. Had I known, I’d not have indulged him in bringing him flowers. I’d not have let them humiliate me over breakfast. I’d not have told him, embarrassing myself only, how pathetically long I’ve thought of him. None of it would have happened, and I’d still be -”

“Missing him?”

Will laughs, presses a hand to his face and laughs, until his lungs hurt and the sound hitches and he forces himself to take a deep breath and release it.

“Wanting him,” he amends. He lifts his eyes to Beverly again, to find her not disgusted or judging him, but merely watching him, waiting for him to speak as he wants, so she can help him understand his own mind.

“I feel like a child,” he sighs, and Beverly hums, curling one leg beneath herself on the branch she sits on.

“It is a wise man who knows what he wants,” she says, “and a child who plays foolish games.”

Will laughs again, helpless and resigned, but when he looks at Beverly he seems more present than when she had joined him, less entrenched in his own mind and the anguish within it. He draws a hand over his face and swallows again, blinking before he turns his eyes to Beverly and tilts his head.

“Am I a fool to love him?”

“We are all fools, who love.”

Will’s smile quirks. “Am I a fool to think he loves me?”

Beverly clicks her fingers, smile back and bright, as though Will had just himself found the key to this entire, dire situation.

“We are all fools, Will, who love,” she repeats.

“Are you always so clever?” he asks, narrowing his eyes almost playfully as she uncurls herself and slips from the branch, dangling for a moment by her arms. She drops into a crouch, straightens again, and comes to stand beneath him.

“Always,” Beverly assures him with a grin. “So what will you do? Life as a bird hardly suits you.”

“What should I do, if you’re so wise?”

Beverly resists her first answer of ‘toss him in the lake, with his sister just after’ and sighs, setting a hand against the tree’s wide trunk. “Do you miss him? Now. Right this moment -”

“Yes,” Will breathes. He is helpless to it, he hates it, but it’s there, within his chest, a sucking pain as if it might snap his ribs inward at any moment.

“Then hear him out. Let him try to make sense of it to you, and if you see more weeds than worth,” she considers, and shrugs. “Burn the field.”

Will regards her, put together and straight backed and smart, and lifts his eyes to the sky again. He thinks of Hannibal’s pleading, his genuine distress at having Will not hear him. He thinks of the oncoming rain, and how it will hit the house this evening, pass by morning to leave the grounds fresh and alive with the rainfall.

“Burn the field,” he sighs, smile growing at the thought that it would be in his power to, that he would not be the victim of it, should he choose not to be.

That it is all, in essence, choice.

He swings his legs over the branch and lands as Beverly had, graceful and quiet, before following her from the forest back to the grounds again.

\---

“You haven’t eaten,” Mischa comments, watching Hannibal lay across the couch, eyes vacant and on the ceiling, unmoving. He had gone to the reading room and not moved since the early afternoon. The lamps would be lit, soon, for anyone wanting to enjoy the library, but Mischa doubts he would notice even then.

“Shall I bring you something?”

“No,” he finally answers, the tall clock in the corner marking his silence. “What I want -”

“You cannot have, I know, Hannibal, I know. It’s all you’ve been saying for days,” she sighs. Silent feet drag across the carpet, and with a flop, she drops back to sit on his legs where he occupies the couch, watching him. “You must eat or you’ll waste away.”

“Good.”

She snorts, swinging her feet so her toes brush the carpet. “Are you angry?”

“At whom?”

“At me.”

“Yes,” he says, first, and then shakes his head, eyes still distant on the ceiling far overhead. “No. You simply moved my hand sooner than I might have, but it was a move that needed be made.”

Mischa accepts his words - his forgiveness - with a hum, until finally she turns a lifted brow towards her brother. “You didn’t have to bed him, you know. You ought to have told him first.”

A blink, slow, and dark eyes settle on her where Mischa sits, the barest tension beneath the lower lids where black bags weigh his eyes in exhaustion. He looks, in a word, awful. He had refused to eat at dinner or breakfast, once in a while pushing himself up to get something from the kitchen at midday when fewer people were around to notice him. He had moped. He is still moping, perfectly echoing the weather outside, with its cool drizzle and gray sky, the third day in a row.

“I bedded him for our mutual pleasure, not for the wager,” he murmurs, and Mischa nods slowly.

“You still should have told him.”

“You have never known passion, Mischa.”

“If it leads to this, I hope never to know it,” she comments, sitting heavier against him until Hannibal moves to a more upright position to save his legs. She watches him, the genuine flicker of pain behind his eyes before he looks away again, and she relents, setting a hand to his, and folding her fingers against his palm.

“I had hoped you would win the wager,” she says, expression soft when he shoots one of anger her way. “You were close as children, and you have always been fond of him.”

“And you not?”

“Never like you,” she points out.

“There was no conclusion to this that was fair to him,” Hannibal observes. “What has come to pass, or what might have had his interest leaned in your direction. To have offered himself to you, in marriage or otherwise, and been rejected -”

He stops, and seeing the guilt settle across her features, murmurs an apology. “Do not carry this burden on yourself, I am wrong to shift it anywhere but my own shoulders. Had I thought clearly about anything but myself, I would have dissuaded you from the idea of it. I did not.” He skims a hand across his eyes and lets his arm lay over them. “Another failing, one of countless.”

Mischa keeps her hand in his other, not giving him freedom enough to pull away, inside himself entirely. “What will you do?” she asks.

“Starve.”

“You will not. And that isn’t what I meant. With him, Hannibal.”

“There’s nothing to be done. There are no words to explain this away, and did they exist, he rightfully would not hear them.”

She considers. She is quiet. Slowly she shifts, to lay atop her brother, a slip of a girl still and light against his chest where she presses, frowning.

“If no words can repair this,” she says, after long moments pass, “then perhaps words are not the answer.”

“He will not let me near to show,” Hannibal replies, “if he will not even hear me call to him from afar.” He turns his hand against Mischa’s own and sighs, eyes closed beneath the one that rests heavy over his eyes. “You are clever, sister, you know it cannot be so simple as that.”

Mischa shifts a little more, presses her back to the back of the sofa and stretches her fingers between her brother’s.

“You think me clever?”

Hannibal sighs, a heavy and slow thing. “Mischa.”

“I ask in earnest.”

Hannibal swallows, taking another breath that fills his chest and hurts his ribs. “I think you much accomplished,” he says. “I think you poised and well read, dedicated and devious. And in all of that, you are a good person, sister, you have a good heart and a patient mind.”

There is a quiet for a moment between them, until Mischa turns to rest her ear against Hannibal’s heart and settle their hands a little higher on his chest.

“And who did I learn from?” she asks him. “Dedication and deviousness, poise and pride and my love of books?” She waits for Hannibal to protest, and he does, with a low hum, and she taps her fingers against his knuckles. “You, brother, taught me patience in my mind and kindness in my heart. If you think me a good student, I am nothing to the master.”

She swallows, takes a deep breath of her own before sighing it free. “Show him,” she repeats.

Hannibal stays quiet, rather than yield to the troubled tempest astir inside him. How might he? He thinks of kissing the man, how flushed and swollen his lips became, parted bright over broad teeth. He thinks of how neatly their bodies fit together, two halves of a whole, not in mirrored symmetry but in perfect complement. He thinks of the innocence of his words and the beauty alight in his eyes when he spoke them, and how swiftly that flame extinguished when Will asked if he’d thought of him at all, even once, before this.

Hannibal’s eyes open, beneath his arm, and he drops it. Heart quickening beneath his sister’s cheek, Mischa lifts a brow and regards her brother.

“He will not allow it,” Hannibal breathes, but an excitement has gathered in his words. “He would not see me to let me -”

“Have you something, then? You must, or you’re nearer to wilting away than I thought by the way your heart protests.”

“I’ve so much,” laughs Hannibal, a sound both hopeless and hopeful all at once. “Years of - yes, I have something, but what good is it when -”

“- he will see you.”

“He will not.”

“Is that a hope or a fear?” Mischa asks, sitting up, brow raised as Hannibal attempts a protest that dies on his lips. Does he fear the rejection so much that he will not even attempt an intervention of it? Is he truly so cowardly and heartless to let this slip away when it was he who made this happen? He licks his lips, a brief flicker, and focuses his eyes on Mischa’s, just as dark as his, and just as clever.

“How?” He asks her, and watches her smile soften to something warm, and proud, and just a little bit mischievous.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “One should always seek to remedy their mistakes,” Mischa declares primly, folding her hands behind her back in a voice and manner so entirely like her brother that Alana blinks, surprised. “We need to arrange a meeting.”

Mischa does not ask her brother what he will show to Will to convince him. In truth, she doesn’t much care. The bet had been a way to pass the time, with consequences neither had predicted, but she had always anticipated he would win Will over far faster than she could, and is content to watch him do so properly now.

She does not ask him, but instead goes to Alana, reading quietly in one of the sun rooms that faces out into the gardens on the first floor, a clear view of the lake and stables beyond through the light drizzle of rain that falls on the estate. Mischa would laugh at how Alana startles when Mischa calls her name, but she did come with purpose, after all.

“Miss Bloom, I would like to take a walk.”

“In this weather?” Alana rests her book in her lap with gentle fingers between the pages. “It would be ill-advised, Mischa, you will catch cold, and it would be far from a pleasant stroll -”

“It would be with purpose.”

“Even purpose should know reason,”

“Love knows no reason,” Mischa points out, walking towards the window to stand on her toes, as though by doing so she would see farther out into the garden, and catch a glimpse of Will from where she watches.

“Are you in love?” Alana asks, voice lightening.

Mischa snorts. “No. Are you?”

The question colors Alana’s cheeks scarlet in an instant, and she finds herself grateful that her charge is still peering out the window. “For what purpose do you seek to drag us both out into the rain?”

“One should always seek to remedy their mistakes,” Mischa declares primly, folding her hands behind her back in a voice and manner so entirely like her brother that Alana blinks, surprised. “We need to arrange a meeting.”

“With whom? Oftentimes when one has made mistakes, the best solution is in fact to be less involved -”

“They need us,” Mischa says, cutting off the quick flurry of Alana’s words. Like a general preparing for battle, the girl pulls her shoulders up tall, and lifts her chin.

Alana sighs. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, I don’t think that Mr. Graham has any more desire to speak to you than to speak to your brother.”

“He will not be speaking to me,” Mischa agrees, turning on her heel and bouncing up on the balls of her feet. “And Hannibal does not need him to speak, merely see. But for that they need to be in the same place, at the same time, with perhaps something preventing both from leaving.”

“You cannot force two people to reconcile -”

“No,” Mischa concedes. She steps closer and lowers herself gracefully into one of the chairs, facing Alana as she draws her feet up onto the seat, curled beneath her. “No, I cannot force. And I suppose what Will chooses to do is something none of us can know or predict, but…”

Mischa bites her lip in thought, brows drawing just enough before she relaxes her face, clears her expression.

“There is something to be said for past friendships and the histories they hold. I think Will would listen if Hannibal spoke to him.”

Alana hums, turning to look outside again. The rain is not heavy but it is unpleasant, a sheer veil of slowly falling drops, like gossamer. Quick to get beneath even the most tightly folded clothes, and threaten one with a cold for going near it.

“They are both stubborn,” she allows after a moment of thought. Her brows knit, and then raise. “But I’ve an idea. Or at least, I’ve someone who will have one, which is as good as having one yourself, really.”

Mischa’s eyes alight as Alana stands, setting her book aside. She moves towards the window herself, now, as her charge’s grin widens.

“By the lake, I think, where there’s bound to be privacy in this weather. Tell your brother.”

“When?”

“Tell him now - for as long as it takes him to dress, the times should coincide,” Alana muses. “And I will do my part to make right these wrongs. Go,” she says, sweeping a hand towards Mischa who bounds to her feet. “I need the services of a certain stable-master.”

\---

“Oh no,” Beverly responds, before Alana’s managed a word. The determination in her eyes, the smile snared in one corner of her lips, it says everything before the woman’s said anything at all. “Don’t you come at me like that.”

“I’ve not come at you, I’ve come _for_ you.”

“Worse yet.”

“You don’t mean it,” Alana frowns, folding her arms. The ruse falls flat, and Beverly tips up her hat, a dubious brow lifted. They stand beneath the overhang of the carriage house, rain dripping in a curtain beside them as it slicks down the roof.

“Ask me what you’re going to ask, and then we’ll see how much I mean it,” Beverly decides.

Alana takes a step closer. Another. They stand near enough that Beverly can smell the powdery perfume Alana wears, delicate and feminine. Near enough that for Alana, the scent of horses clinging to her paramour is overwhelming. She clears her throat, and leans a little nearer still.

“Mister Graham -”

“No.”

Alana blinks. “But -”

“I’ve no wish to be involved in your games, Alana Bloom,” scolds Beverly, but her eyes widen and her voice quiets when Alana presses a hand to her hip, curled around the rough-fabric’d breeches. “Unfair.”

“All’s fair,” Alana says, grinning. “Mister Graham is needed beside the lake, upon the path beneath the trees, immediately.”

“To what end?”

“Yet unknown. Perhaps a fish has perished upon the shore, its smell unpleasant. It hardly matters -”

“And if I do send him on this fool’s errand?”

“To your end,” Alana promises, leaning to brush the tips of their noses together, “involvement in more of my games, reserved especially for you.”

Beverly lifts a gloved hand, and brushes calfskin-clad knuckles down Alana’s cheek. Dark eyes search between hers, and she grins. “When did you become so devious?”

“Since you made it so easy,” she answers. Their lips touch softly, just brushing together, and before they’re seen, Alana draws away. “No more, until you’re done.”

“And then?”

“Come and find me, and I’ll make sure you’re done properly.”

\---

The rain does not ease, but nor does it increase, as Will makes his way to the lake, head down and drops collecting and slipping from the brim of his hat as he looks, futilely, for the fish Beverly had claimed was there. It is rare that the fish make it to shore without external help, from a fishing rod, perhaps, or a cat or a bird.

In this weather, Will would put his money on birds, hungry and seeking, but none are at the lake’s edge now.

Just as, to his genuine frustration, there is no fish.

Will lifts his head, closing his eyes to catch the light rain against his face, before he sighs and continues on. He does not look up again, mind distracted and body in rhythm, now, of slow steps and a turn of his head, and he startles when his shoulder strikes against a solid form. Too warm to be a tree, too stoic to be any sort of animal. Will lifts his head, eyes wide with apology, and blinks at the man before him, impeccably dressed, even in this weather, gloved hands holding the long, elegantly curved handle of an umbrella now covering them both.

For a moment, Will doesn’t speak, but he turns his eyes away from Hannibal as quickly as they had landed on him, lips pursing and throat working in a swallow before Will adjusts his hat and shrugs his coat against himself closer.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, trying to step around the man to continue on his search.

“Do not be,” Hannibal tells him gently. “Not ever to me.”

The words hearken back to thoughts Will would rather not have, and pull a shiver through him that he resents. His lips thin and he takes a step, only for Hannibal to move before him again. In his other hand, a little book bound in black leather. Will averts his eyes to the shore again.

“I’ve work to do. Please, excuse me -”

“And if I do not?” Hannibal asks, but there’s no threat in his words, only a hopeful playfulness that does no more good than to narrow Will’s gaze further. “You do not have to listen to me -”

“Then I will not.”

Hannibal’s jaw flickers with a quick tension, and he ducks his head. Cradling the umbrella in the crook of his arm, against his shoulder, Hannibal takes the book in both hands and offers it forward.

“Do not listen, then. Look, and see.”

For a moment he wonders if Will truly will just step around him and go on his way, but something holds him, some tug of curiosity, something more, perhaps. Instead, Will brings his hands to his chest to work off his gloves, finger by finger, to avoid wetting the pages of the book he takes.

It is a bound journal, one that has been mended multiple times, and inexpertly - some pages pushing out farther than others, no longer lined up neatly as they had been at the beginning. The corners of the cover are worn soft, and Will is careful when he opens it, blinking at the first page.

On it, in inelegant childish hand, are Latin verbs, written and rewritten, with red markings beside, suggesting corrections needed. For a moment, Will’s brows furrow and he wonders why he holds Hannibal’s old schoolbook in his hand, wonders if it is another taunt to push their distance more to the forefront of his mind. But then he sees it, a bare sketch fading with time, of curly hair and a softly rounded jawline. No eyes, on this image, but the fringe worked to suggest it merely covers them. It is clear who the picture is of, and Will’s cheeks color.

He swallows, does not look up, and without a word turns the page.

On and on they go, until the sketches take up more room than lessons, and then the lessons just fade to nothing. Better and better the drawings become, with shading and depth where at first there were only lines to suggest shape. Will with his head ducked over a book, Will with his hands on a fishing rod he had made - the detailing of his hands takes up most of the page, like a study of his fingers, then little and inexpert in tying a lure. Will smiling, Will frowning, Will’s back as he stands before - or behind - an elaborate window, just looking into the garden. Will with broader shoulders and a stronger back.

Will as he had grown, with Hannibal but never _with_ him. Always seen, never forgotten.

Will’s throat clicks when he swallows and he parts his lips, eyes up to Hannibal who watches him quietly, holding the umbrella to protect them both from the rain. Will bites his lip and releases it with a sigh, trying to find words and feeling his tongue too heavy to make any. He swallows, again, and presses his lips together.

“You were always so good at sketching,” he whispers.

Hannibal closes his eyes, a beat longer than a blink, and allows his relief to show in a soft smile.

“You made me good,” Hannibal tells him. He reaches, to turn the page again, to one dated on the night that Will brought his puppy to him. He recalls the flurry of paper, moved quickly aside from the desk. He recalls how near they had come that night to kissing, and his cheeks warm.

The older boy lifts his hand, slowly so as not to startle, and when Will does not protest, Hannibal brushes his thumb beneath his friend’s eye, across his blush.

“Always my favorite subject,” he says, a breath of laughter inflected in his words. “I could draw you from memory, at any age, even now. I thought it simple familiarity, longing for childhood - I explained it all away many times, and did not understand, until you came to me and spoke.”

He lowers his hand and sighs, accepting his own defeat as gracefully as one might hope to.

“I have, I think, always loved you. I will, still, even if only allowed from a distance,” Hannibal says, and the finality in his voice grates soft as porcelain edges, cracked but held together, their rough edges feigning wholeness. “You may keep it, or throw it away. Whatever pleases you. I imagine I will continue regardless.”

Will closes the book carefully again and holds it in his hands, just looking at the cover, stroking fingers over the worn leather and card beneath. He unbuttons his coat and sets it into the pocket against his chest before crossing his arms over his middle and just watching the ground. Around them, the rain has increased, no wind, yet, but heavier drops that beat against the umbrella and drip around them in a wide circle.

Will takes a step closer, and after a moment, he rests his forehead against Hannibal’s shoulder.

“You hurt me,” he says softly, feels Hannibal’s heart hammer against his chest, an admission without words, an apology in the soft hand that finds his hair as Will shivers and leans into him more. “Don’t do it again.”

Hannibal’s breath shudders, reserves depleted to bear himself as the Lecter heir, the head of household, as anything more than just a boy in love, hopelessly in love with the only friend he’s ever known. He touches his lips to the damp curls of hair, against his temple, his cheek, and when Will lifts his head just a little, they kiss.

Around them the world melts away to grey, but between them, colors explode. Their lips part reddened, their cheeks bright, each touch a luminous spark - Will’s hand gathering in the front of Hannibal’s coat, Hannibal’s fingertips beneath Will’s chin. Only a smile parts them, only words, now, easy words between.

“I promise, never intentionally, not again,” Hannibal whispers. “And if I do by mistake, make me good again.”

Will just smiles, pushing up on his toes to kiss Hannibal again as the other holds him close, as the rain around them shivers to a shower and they stand dry beneath the large black umbrella. They wait together there until the torrent eases once more, until they can walk side-by-side and not get wet for the effort.

But even in that, Will is the first to break from the safety of the oiled silk and whalebone, to run with a whoop into the rain and jump with a bright splash into a puddle.

Perhaps he has not yet outgrown childish things, Will thinks, as Hannibal watches him, wide-eyed and awed, before bringing his hand out into the rain to check the fall of it. Primly, he folds the umbrella closed and sets it against the nearest tree. Childish things like chasing each other in the rain without fear of catching cold, like the mud upon their clothes, like catching slippery hands and pulling each other near, like falling in love.

Perhaps neither of them have, Will thinks. He hopes they never do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks and love to our fabulous beta reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for her amazing attention to detail and swift reading skills! You are the best!

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the poem "[In Diem Natalem](http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/diem-natalem)" by Elizabeth Carter.
> 
> Protect me by thy providential care,  
> And warn my soul to shun the tempter's snare.  
> Thro' all the shifting scenes of varied life,  
> In calms of ease, or ruffling storms of grief,  
> Thro' each event of this inconstant state,  
> Preserve my temper equal and sedate.  
> Give me a mind, that nobly can despise  
> The low designs, and little arts of vice.  
> 
> 
> A huge thank you to our invaluable and incredible beta reader: [noodletheelephant](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)! Please go say hi to this brilliant human being.


End file.
